writer's moll

I don’t know whether ‘football’s coming home’, but I do know that a football revolution is under way. Normally during world cups, women bemoaned the loss of their blokes to beer and tele for the next month, phoned friends, relatives and long lost acquaintances in an effort to avoid the noise levels in the next room going off the scale with screams of ecstasy or abuse whenever a goal was scored. Everyone knew that women couldn’t enjoy football since they didn’t even know the offside rule. Now, everywhere you go you can hear them discussing the merits of all the players, whether the famous metatarsal of Rooney will be healed, whether Eriksson will play the 4.4.2 formation. But we still can’t win. Now we’re being accused of bluffing our way into the boys’ territory and the real football fans demand more proof that we’re really there for the game and not to ogle the gorgeous body of David Beckham. A discussion on the radio had some pundit giving advice on the dos and don’ts of being a proper fan. Do: support a little team, like Grimsby, don’t: ask why Freddie Flintoff isn’t in the squad.

But a Scottish MP has come out to say that he won’t be supporting England in the world cup. Why do the Scots have such a chip on their shoulder about the English? I know we chopped off Mary Queen of Scots’s head, but for God’s sake that was over 400 years ago and we’ve been trying to make it up to them ever since by giving them all the plum jobs at the BBC and Tony has even promised to give his own job to a Scot. We support them when they play against the rest of the world, we buy their shortbread biscuits, drink their whisky, applaud politely when they blow their bagpipes in our faces and marvel at their record at engineering. Come on you jocks, fair's fair – let’s have a bit of support.

One of the most excruciating aspects of the build up to the world cup is the constant re-playing of England’s victory in 1966. 1966, that’s 40 years ago and if I see Geoff Hurst’s final goal one more time … it’s embarrassing watching these ‘old’ men being wheeled out every other day to recall what it felt like to be there. Obviously I’d love England to win, if for no other reason than to have a change of faces for the re-run in four year's time.