Read Online Get Her Off the Pitch! by Lynne Truss - Free Book Online

disgraceful suffrage record. Moreover, according to my Euro 96 guide, Switzerland were not one of the great teams of the world, either, so they would probably be an utter walkover on thefield, thus ensuring a nice successful opening game for the home side. At this stage, it had not occurred to me that the 15 teams competing alongside England in Euro 96 had all needed to qualify for the event - or, indeed, noticed that many, many other European countries were not represented at all. I never asked, ‘Shouldn’t Sweden be playing in this?’ or ‘Where is the Republic of Ireland?’. I just thought it was fitting that small countries with no chance at all were playing alongside big footballing nations such as Germany, England and Italy. It seemed to have been nicely thought out; someone high up in football had obviously sat down in the winter with a yellow legal pad, a sharp pencil, a cup of coffee and a biscuit, and selected this bunch of interesting countries to play against each other - a bit like planning a really big dinner party, but with less at stake if it went wrong.
    Meanwhile, I waited. At the last minute, The Times supplied me with an intriguing electronic device: a special bt pager decorated with the Euro 96 logo which would, they promised, thrillingly vibrate to inform me whenever anything important happened (in case I missed it, I suppose). For the time being, however, this gadget was inert, lifeless - even when prodded. I wrote an introductory piece explaining how I had achieved my pristine ignorance of football over a lifetime of loudly running the bath, boiling kettles and singing tunelessly to the cats (‘La la la, What’s for breakfast today, La la la, Spot of Whiskas, La la la’) during the sports bit on the Today programme at 7.25 a.m. and/or 8.25 a.m. Then I finalised my preparations by asking my friend Robert to come with me to Wembley, knowing that he had an interest in football, andassuming he would snatch my arm off for a ticket. What a let-down, therefore, to discover that, while he would certainly be happy to escort me to England-Switzerland, Robert was a Sheffield Wednesday fan primarily, and not over-keen on international fixtures.
    So that was it. On the fine morning of Saturday June 8, 1996, I set off for Wembley from Brighton station clutching a pair of tickets and a dormant pager, wondering whether I’d be able to recognise Les Ferdinand with his clothes on, imagining the tournament mainly in terms of social dining, and with a slightly under-excited friend in tow. Not great clues, any of them, to the fact that my world was about to be turned upside down.
    I’ll mainly skip over the England-Switzerland game. All I can say is that I was jolly pleased when Alan Shearer scored the opening goal halfway through the first half, partly because it made my pager go off with a very definite buzz (wow), and partly because everyone said he’d gone 21 months without scoring for his country, which seemed like a pretty good reason for him not to be selected for the team, actually, if you were being ruthlessly practical about it. When Switzerland equalised from a penalty in the second half, it was a bit confusing for spectators in the stadium, because we had no idea what had caused it (evidently a hand-ball from Stuart Pearce was the transgression), but the final 1-1 result - while apparently a great big downer for England fans - did not feel like any sort of injustice. England had been disorganised and had run out of ideas quite quickly; after the long-drawn-out palaverof the loosely-themed opening ceremony, and the excitement of the opening goal, the afternoon sort-of fizzled out, and there were long, yawning patches of pointless play that took place amid virtual silence, as if the whole event had suddenly been submerged under water.
    Not that it was restful. I learned not to get settled too comfortably at football, because you were always having to jump up when