Never mind the bollocks, here's the football

A major international tournament is a perfect time for someone like me. If football is on the telly, I’ll give it a go. You never know when you might see something spectacular. And although incredible things are more likely to happen in top level football, one only has to watch the goal highlights shows from the football league to realise that you can see amazing stuff all the way through league one and two and beyond. Fat blokes who barely made it to the ground for kick off are curling in thirty-five yard free kicks into the top corner. Not often but you never know. Which is why you have to watch all of it.
With that in mind, I tried to watch Northern Ireland play Poland. After the stirring stuff from Wales and the slightly unfortunate draw for England, I was hoping that the other country connected to us by geography and politics could do the business. As we know, the Poles are a decent international team with some quality players and one superstar. Whereas the Northern Irish are something of an unknown quantity. And I discovered that the reason that they’re unknown is that they’re virtually unwatchable. I really wanted them to go for it but they showed so little ambition, I went and had a lie down at half time. A sort of if you can’t be arsed, neither can I. (To give you some context, it was late afternoon and I often have a nap around that time. Of course if I’m watching a really good game, I might push on through to the evening but this game was SO boring, I couldn’t face another minute). I also watched some of Germany v Ukraine and the Germans are contenders. But we knew that.
Meanwhile, UEFA have threatened England and Russia with expulsion from the tournament if there’s any more trouble. Serious stuff. But I don’t even want to talk about that anymore. There are dozens of decent and sometimes worthy articles asking what can be done/suggesting what should be done. Read them.
I want to talk about the football and how unifying a big tournament like this can be. About my mates from Wales and Northern Ireland who’ve never been to a major finals having a fantastic time mixing with fans from other nations. About Welsh fans applauding a married couple and giving them a guard of honour. That sort of nonsense. Onwards and hopefully upwards