England 1–Italy 2

Our apologies for our very unbelievably late response and reaction to England’s first match in their quest for World Cup supremacy on Saturday night ……

…… time and fatigued conspired against us.  An eleven o’clock kick off was well beyond the realms of our staying up late policy ….. and in the state we were in, in the aftermath, an insightful and intelligent blog post was never going to be a goer for the next morning.At the start of the evening we decided to be sensible and settled down on the settee before the action started all wrapped up and snug (without confectionary again due to the lateness of the hour), just in case any of us nodded off, despite all the tangible and palpable excitement that we hoped would unfold before us ….

When Italy scored first …… we thought our groans were loud enough …… but obviously our neighbours were equally as disappointed as we were because we were able to hear all their reactions quite clearly too!

However, it wasn’t long before Sturridge equalised for us ….. let’s just put it this way ….. we celebrated very loudly, proudly and most robustly …… along with our aforementioned and equally loud neighbours!

There then followed the agonising wait for another goal (on our side) but regretfully that goal did not transpire ….. instead, there was another goal from Italy ….

…. which threw us and our neighbour into the depths of despair judging from his “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”, as they scored, and by now time was running perilously short for England …….

And that is how the match ended ….. England 1 – Italy 2. Still …. looking on the bright side, all is not lost (yet) we still have Costa Rica and Uruguay to play ……..

…… so we are remaining, for now, optimistically bouyant and confident!

As for our works sweepstake team to wit Portugal, perhaps they will fair a little better than England when they play Germany later on today …………. we can but hope!