Laurence Heytesbury reporting:
The main thing I realised during England-France was that if you did one of those Sun-style morphs between Eamon Dunphy and the Cowardly Lion from Wizard of Oz, the exact midpoint would be Roy Hodgson’s face.
O’Reilly’s in Sandymount was the venue last night, we had about 8% of the pub cheering for England and I think half of that was due to accumulator bets. Fun Fact - any man in an Irish pub has encyclopedic knowledge of the odds on every possible outcome in every possible match.
I had a feeling Lescott would score first last night, it never occurred to me to back him. A complete stranger informed me I could have got 25/1 on him and then reeled off random first-scorer odds for Ukraine-Sweden.
Talking of complete strangers, the guy next to me in the pub said ‘Yes’ fifteen separate times when Nasri equalised. He was sitting next to a framed Man United kit on the wall.
The second game was fantastic, until I realised England have to play both of those teams. I will be attempting to watch Friday’s match whilst on the way to Sligo’s version of The Burning Man festival. In a world where Sligo has a version of the Burning Man, surely anything is possible, like Didi Hamman’s accent or England winning their next two games.
