The Three Dads World Cup Wonderland

So, where were we? Since I last posted (whilst France recovered from their early setback to maul Australia), I have been assaulted by a mountain of work. 2 consecutive days of back to back video calls for the first 5 hours of the working day would typically have left me very cross indeed about the shocking and unacceptable work/football balance. Luckily though, I seem to have missed the majority of the dross. Basically game after game of nil nil tedium seem to have been played out silently on my tablet whilst I've been doing my very best to be a hard working honest human.  That first paragraph is all the analysis you'll get from me on Morocco v Croatia (0-0), Uruguay v South Korea (0-0) or Switzerland v Cameroon (1-0).  I'm going to reserve judgement on all 6 of those teams until after the second set of games.  The games I emerged for seem to have been much better - which does spark a bit of a chicken or egg debate in my mind. Fortuitious? Or was there an imperceptible prio

My post this evening comes from, unsurprisingly, in front of the telly. I'm watching football. Whilst that is not entirely surprising, I have actually had a bit of a struggle with it today. I had an office-day. The horror unfolded as I went into a 90 minute meeting with Argentina leading 1-0 and seemingly coasting to victory. They'd got their goal and were cutting through the Saudis with ease, having one or two [correctly] disallowed for offside. I gave myself the pep-talk - "it's fine Birchy, work is work and this is a foregone conclusion anyway. Watch the highlights and grow up a bit" . The rest, as they say is history. I saw the drama unfolding with a couple of phone checks, and returned from the meeting to the barrage of WhatsApps, declaring it a fantastic match, a true spectacle and probably one of the greatest upsets in World Cup history.  I'm fine about it. Really.  More meetings interrupted the Denmark v Tunisia game - which looked better than the nil-

 I feel tense, on edge, braced for something awful. Yet at the same time there's a glimmer of excitement. This World Cup is definitely like no other.  From the [still preposterous to me] 3rd minute VAR decision that saved Qatar from the score-line humiliation that their meek performance deserved, to the capitulation of the England camp to FIFA's captain's armband edict - things don't look right. The glorious shiny stadium that hosted the opening game was largely empty by the end and the stadium atmosphere at England's game at the moment has a hollow feeling about it. Part of my apprehension of course is that it would just be SO ENGLAND to go and win this particular tournament; and then we as a country wouldn't quite know what to do about it, our country name indelibly engraved in oil, blood and essence-of-intolerance upon on the Jules Rimet trophy.   As I write now I am watching on slight delay, after inexplicably agreeing to do an interview for a new staff memb

Here we go again! The quadrennial celebration of all things football that unites the world. A beacon of all things great in the world where billions of people excitedly gather to watch sporting history.  Sadly this time around, the only thing the world is united on is a feeling of meh. There’s no debate to be had, this stinks. The corruption, the sportswashing, the human rights. It stinks for the players - what should be their crowning professional achievement and all they’re hearing is they’re either saying too much or not doing enough. It’s a no win situation. And in that vein, I finish the final episode of FIFA uncovered on Netflix and take 3 showers and hunker down to try to just focus on the football. After all, this is what it’s supposed to be about, so let’s make a start on this blog to take our game back! It’s been an eventful 4 years since last time. Certainly the last host venue didn’t age well….dang, focus on the footie… let’s talk Gareth. This might be a continuation of the