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.
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