Yesterday, as England awoke to bask in the glory of her most significant sporting achievement of recent years, I wandered into town to pick up a new grip for my squash racquet.
Bam! |
But I couldn't find one. Not easily, anyway.
Range Rover attire |
We love sport as a nation. With an average attendance of nearly 35,000 per game in 2009-10, Premiership football beats La Liga and Serie A hands down. A friend who was lucky enough to attend the final Ashes test at the Sydney Cricket Ground this week said that the Barmy Army, English cricket's good-humoured supporter group, had made sufficient noise to make it seem like a home game... and we all know that if we'd been given the chance to host the 2018 World Cup, it would have been brilliant. (Bloody FIFA!)
Barmy in the pink |
This is probably the reasoning behind the fact that - as I eventually located a racquet grip behind a rail of orange hoodies - I could also have bought a £50 replica shirt for any one of the 20 Premiership football teams, but none of an assortment of stereotypically acne-ridden shop assistants looked like they would have had too much clue if I'd asked them to fit me for a pair of boots or provide information on the modest selection of cricket bats.
And the bottom line is: without me, what chance do England have!?