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England? Never again! by Hardy on 13/02/2003 With England playing just up the road at Upton Park, Hardy decided to break his self imposed ban on watching the national side play for the first time in over 20 years. England? Never again! With England playing just up the road at Upton Park, Hardy decided to break his self imposed ban on watching the national side play for the first time in over 20 years. After the shambles of losing to Australia he wonders why. Distant memories Watching the England team play was one of the pleasures of my youth and from the mid 70's to 1981 I faithfully travelled up on the Metropolitan Line to Wembley to see most home games that the side played. These were the days of big perms, Kevin Keegan in his pomp and Trevor Brooking when he played a great game, rather than talking one. I had some great nights out like the 3-1 win over the Argentina of Mario Kempes and some kid called Maradona and sharing whiskey with the Irish on the terraces while we beat them in a European qualifier. The not so great travel home after the game was a minor inconvenience with the hoards herded to Wembley Park station by police horses. The one game back then that you could never get a ticket for was the bi-annual England v Scotland game. Then one season the Scots trashed Wembley after a game and were banned. The FA acted and stated that no tickets for the 1981 game would be sold to Scots. As the game approached the FA decided that any fan with three ticket stubs from home games that season would be guaranteed a ticket for the England v Scotland game in May. Myself and the three mates I used to go to games with sent off our stubs and were disappointed to only get 2 tickets back. This was due to "high demand". Then the day of the game. It was clear that the "Ye canna ban us Mr Croker" crew were in town in force, but the full reality of it was only clear in the stadium with just two areas of terracing packed with home fans, the rest of Wembley decked out in tartan. Of course the two areas were in the lower terrace and resulted in them being targets for all sorts of stuff being chucked from the top, not to mention being a urinal for the Scots pen immediately above. On that day I vowed never to watch England live again having been sold out by the FA and until yesterday I had kept my vow. And so to Upton Park With the England roadshow rolling in to Upton Park and a son of my own desperate to see his heroes first hand I finally relented and got hold of tickets for England v Australia. These were £22.00 a seat (no concessions) somewhere in the gods up in one corner of the Doc Martens Stand. Oh, plus a £2.10 booking charge of course. The travel to the game was reasonable and the atmosphere before the game pretty good. Sven named just the 16 subs so it was pretty obvious what was going to happen but the side for the first half was pretty good and we sat back and waited for vengeance for the cricket to be visited on the Aussies. Being there for the dismal display of defending was even worse than watching it on the TV where at least switching off and doing something else was an option. 2-0 down at half time, bugger. Boo the overpaid, over-rated superstars off and bring the kids on for the second half. At least "England B" showed some fight, even scored, before the Aussies got a third to kill the game late on. The most fun had was the streaker and watching the fight several rows behind us between a bunch of drunk locals and some Aussies, in full colours, who had tickets in the home areas. It took an hour to get on a train at Upton Park, which terminated at Barking, naturally, and we got home at 11:30pm thoroughly pissed off, just in time to catch Beckham telling us that he didn't think the booing was fair and Sven trying to draw the positives from the game, both done with a straight face somehow. So what was the point of that? Quite frankly, I have no idea. My self imposed ban on watching England has been re-imposed and, barring some kind of corporate jolly will never again be broken. Once again the FA have shafted the football fan, happy to take my money, but giving virtually nothing in return. If I was one of the big names that played in that first half yesterday I would be ashamed of myself. Are they though? No chance!! I'll be sticking to watching the Daggers from here on in where the players look interested in the games and the manager tells it how it is.