England are a good footballing nation. It's true!

It's quite fashionable these days to deride the England football team as a serially underperforming group of spoiled and over-hyped dilettantes. English football, the narrative goes, has underperformed since 1966, and we should not expect anything better this time around.

This is blamed on everything from the influx of foreign players to excessive salaries to tactical ignorance and even poor skills. But this search for a reason for failure is to miss a basic point: England has not suddenly started failing. In fact, England has only truly flopped twice.

This misperception has a number of causes, but I won't go into that now; what I care about is correcting the record. England do not flop at World Cups on a regular basis. In fact, they hardly ever do.

England are, in fact, a successful international team which has usually come up short against very good opponents, often in unfortunate circumstances. Let's look at which teams have actually eliminated England since their World Cup debut in 1950, and how those teams subsequently performed.

Who has eliminated England over the years?

Year	Eliminated in	Eliminated by	Position reached by team eliminating England
1950	Group stage	Spain	4th
1954	Q-finals	Uruguay	4th
1958	Group stage	Brazil	Winners
		USSR	Quarter-finals
1962	Quarter-finals	Brazil	Winners
1966	Winners	-	-
1970	Quarter-finals	W Germany	3rd
1974	DNQ	Poland	3rd
1978	DNQ	Italy	4th
1982	Second round	W Germany	2nd
1986	Quarter-finals	Argentina	Winners
1990	Semi-finals	W Germany	Winners
1994	DNQ	Norway	Group stage
		The Netherlands	Quarter-finals
1998	Second round	Argentina	Quarter-finals
2002	Quarter-finals	Brazil	Winners
2006	Quarter-finals	Portugal	4th
2010	Second round	Germany	3rd
2014	Group stage	Costa Rica	Quarter-finals
		Uruguay	Round of 16

England lose to good teams

The first thing that jumps out is that England tend to get knocked out by sides that do well, including the eventual champions or runners-up five times. On only four occasions were they eliminated by a team which failed to reach the last four.


Even the most frequently touted failures, the consecutive non-qualificatons in 1974 and 1978, are less egregious when considering the quality of the teams which eliminated them. In 1974, Poland went on to finish third, while in 1978 Italy finished fourth.

The four "failure" tournaments were in 1958, 1994, 1998 and 2014, and two of those can be discounted to some extent.

In 1958 they were eliminated 1-0 in a playoff by the USSR, who would be crowned European champions two years later. In 1998 they lost on penalties against Argentina in a thrilling match. So both were disappointing defeats but hardly disastrous under-performances.

I would argue that leaves only 1994 and 2014 should be considered genuine flops. Let's take a closer look.

1994: Norwegian disaster

In 1994, Graham Taylor's reign effectively ended when the side was eliminated in qualifying by Norway and the Netherlands. Norway went on to score just one goal in the finals in the USA and were eliminated at the group stage, while the Dutch lost in the quarter finals to eventual champions Brazil.

The elimination is more disappointing when considering the side drew its home games against both Norway and the Netherlands despite leading in both matches. The calibre of English players was high enough that they had reached the semi-finals four years earlier, and would reach the Euro semi-finals two years later.

Norway's failure to progress at the finals suggests they should have been beatable for a nation with England's apparent player resources.

2014: Early defeats and a tepid draw

In 2014, England qualified but then lost their first two games, against Italy and Uruguay, and were eliminated even before they played out a 0-0 draw with group winners Costa Rica.

That Italy also failed to get out of the group shows the group was very tight, but the fact that Uruguay could not get past the last 16 is telling. Costa Rica beat Greece on penalties in the round of 16, but then went out on penalties against the Netherlands.

Other sides have had bad runs

So, I think it's reasonable to say England struggle when they come up against high quality
opposition, but they are not regular flops. Like countries such as France, Spain and the Netherlands, England has had very good periods and very poor ones.

France failed to qualify in 1990 and 1994 before winning on home soil in 1998; the Dutch failed to qualify in 1982 and 1986 and have never won the tournament, but were European champions in 1988; Spain missed out in 1970 and 1974, and have only made it to the last four twice, in 1950 and then when they won the whole shebang in 2010.

Only one major upset loss, ever

In terms of major upsets, only the legendary loss to the 1-0 USA in 1950 was really seismic. And despite that loss, it was Spain that won the group with ease and beat England 1-0 in the final match. This was an era more notable for English ignorance of, and therefore vulnerability to, foreign tactics than it was for poor English play or players.

That astonishing loss to the USA is an isolated upset defeat at the World Cup itself. Usually, poor performances result in draws (e.g.: Morocco in 1986, Algeria in 2010) rather than defeats. 

Ask the Italians, French and Germans about upsets

Compare that with reigning champions France losing to Senegal in 2002, or Argentina going down to Cameroon in 1990, while Italy's losses to North Korea (1966) and South Korea (2002) were as astonishing as West Germany's defeats at the hands of Algeria in 1982 and East Germany in 1974.

Crucially, England don't tend to get over bad performances and build a winning campaign, whereas West Germany and Argentina did when they went on to reach the finals in 1982 and 1990 respectively. And in 1974, West Germany managed to ride out a group stage defeat to go on and win the tournament, as did Spain in 2010.

But there is no genuine comparison in English World Cup history to the Italian loss to South Korea in the last 16 in 2002, or of the French defeat to Senegal and subsequent failure to get out of their group that same year. Nor has there been the sort of wipe-out and collapse that Spain suffered as champions in 2014, when they were beaten 5-1 by the Netherlands in their opening match and then 2-0 by Chile to go out at the group stage.

England will probably do OK

So, do not expect England to be able to roll over top sides at the tournament, but do have realistic expectations of progress.

Their history suggests they will qualify from the group stage, but not without some difficulty, and will then lose to a good side in the knockout phase.

That's not bad; it's par for the course. Anything more and it's a genuine triumph; anything less and it's a rare failure.

Heads, you lose

I would like to conduct a little thought experiment.

Say you own a car with a sophisticated computer control system. It is in charge of everything, from the fuel injectors and ABS to all the little dashboard indicator lights, even the ones you don't really understand. Also, your car has no windows and you rely totally on external cameras, controlled by that computer, to tell you where you are and how fast you are going. The suspension is so good you can't even feel the road, and you rely on the traction control system a lot.

One day you're out driving through town and the computer is, somehow, hit so hard by a rock that it stops working and you're plunged into darkness. Eventually the computer flickers back into life and the dashboard lights say it's OK. Would you then go and drive it as fast as you could along a twisting mountain road, assuming that the computer was back in full control of the visibility, the ABS and the traction control? Or would you, I dunno, take it to the garage first?

The car, dear reader, is Hugo Lloris. Romelu Lukaku's accidental knee was the rock and suddenly the Spurs-Everton match was the potential scene for a car wreck from which the only possible victim was Hugo Lloris.

Our brains do everything; they are in charge of our every sense and action. If they get bashed they stop working for a bit. In fact if they get bashed a couple of times in a row without being repaired fully they can stop working properly permanently. Yes, permanently.

Spurs have been spluttering some pretty poor excuses since Lloris was allowed to continue, claiming they were satisfied that he was not concussed.

Let's dismiss this conceit. They could not know conclusively that he had not suffered concussion. For starters, I was watching the game and I am reasonably sure no-one brought a CT scanner onto the field to give him a once-over.

What they were relying on were questions to gauge his awareness and the limited physical examinations they could carry out (probably checking pupil responsiveness and looking for superficial evidence of injury).

This is like looking at our damaged car's bonnet and dashboard lights to decide whether it's OK to go for your mountain drive. The only practical way to be safe is to stop the car, take it to a garage and have a good old look at that computer.

Hugo Lloris, at the moment he was knocked unconscious, became a patient first and a footballer second. The doctors were, at best, guessing as to his brain health. But they relied on Lloris saying he felt OK, which is to say they relied on Lloris's brain correctly diagnosing an injury to itself. They relied on the lights on the dashboard, when it was the very computer controlling those lights that might have been malfunctioning.

Anyone who is knocked unconscious in a sports match should go off. Any argument that this is unnecessary is based on the needs of the team or the sport, not the patient. Football teams don't die or suffer long-term disability because a player goes off injured.

English rugby needs to face its demons

The inability of English rugby to find a sensible structure for its domestic competitions is madness.

On the same day the national team produced a creditable (but deeply flawed - see below) win against Australia, I joined several thousand Leicester and Harlequins fans to see two sides play at Welford Road.

The two sides were missing their best players, who were busy beating Australia. So why on earth did this club match happen?

All it really did was give some second-tier players a run-out. What country's rugby infrastructure can afford its premier domestic competition to be a proving ground for youngsters, helped along by able but ageing veterans like Nick Easter and George Chuter?

The major Southern Hemisphere nations long ago took the hard-nosed but effective decision that their respective domestic club/provincial competitions should become feeders for the Super 15 tournament. That trans-national competition is the toughest in the world and is scheduled to avoid conflicts with the Test calendar, so the very best domestic rugby never clashes with Test rugby.

At some point, the European nations have to come to the same conclusion or something similar. The Heineken Cup could become the dominant competition, for example, with promotion and relegation from European nations' domestic competitions. The Heineken Cup could then be co-ordinated around
Test matches.

Of course, that would devalue competitions like the Premiership, but that is already the case with debacles like last night's Leicester v Quins match. Better to act decisively for the good of the game than limp along as we do now.

Meanwhile, speaking of being decisive, as England wakes up to savour that win over Australia I wonder if Stuart Lancaster still believes Chris Ashton is a Test-quality winger. The burly showboater does, or used to, have a good nose for the try line but his decision-making and defensive frailty are a liability. His awful decision to chase Quade Cooper's flat pass led directly to an Australian try, on another occasion he caught a deep kick and passed to Mike Brown then fled the scene instead of supporting his fullback, and one quick tap on attack was nearly botched completely.

This England team has the potential to do well at the next World Cup, and Lancaster is building good depth in certain positions. This is especially so in the tight and loose forwards but the indecisiveness and inconsistency of most of the back line on attack and defence is an enormous problem. Fullback Mike Brown is the only exception to this criticism.

On their good days they play like they did against (a physically drained) New Zealand last season, but on a bad day they can only just summon the collective wherewithal to threaten a sloppy, unimpressive Australia. The bottom line is that this side cannot currently hope to beat either South Africa or New Zealand when those sides are in anything like top form.

This is partly because England's backs are fast, strong and capable but make too many basic mistakes under pressure. Ashton (see above), Yarde (his silly block on Ashley-Cooper), Twelvetrees (missed tackle on Toomua) and Farrell (missed goal kicks) all made errors in basic skills or decision making which cost points. Yarde showed some scintillating pace and will probably learn from his error, Farrell is a acknowledged as a world class kicker and Twelvetrees is this country's best distributing inside-centre, so these black marks need to be taken in context. But these gifted players make those mistakes under pressure too often that is the problem.

The pack, led by the increasingly assured Chris Robshaw and featuring the likes of Joe Launchbury, Billy Vuniopola, Dan Coles, Tom Youngs, Mako Vunipola, Courtney Lawes and Tom Wood, can reasonably expect to match the Springboks or All Blacks. Yet they will know in their very bones that the back line does not have the consistent quality to win such games.

Conversely, such is the depth and the intensity of high-calibre competition for places in the All Blacks that consistency has become the key to being selected. If I were England I would be more than a little nervous about facing such a side eager to atone for last season's performance.

Indeed, Chris Ashton's instinctive desire to show off with that swallow dive to score against the All Black last season will have been noted by the men in black. They will be itching to have the chance to put him firmly in his place this time around. Only greater collective and individual consistency, particularly in the backs, will prevent the New Zealanders from reasserting their long-held dominance over England.

Jamie Roberts puts his head on the line

Jamie Roberts is going to play an international rugby match with a brain injury.

There, that’s pretty stark, isn’t it? I wonder if the Welsh team doctors have been that blunt with him.

Because he freely admits in today’s Independent that he was “knocked out cold” at the weekend and has very hazy memories of even leaving the pitch. But he’s been told he’s “fit and ready to go”.

I’m not a health professional, but it doesn’t require a lifetime’s training in the nuances of neurology and neurosurgery to be able to read.

And when you look at even the more accessible research into brain injury, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that a bang on the head is more than something which you shake off in a week.

When you suffer such an injury the basic building blocks of consciousness and coherent thought, the brain cells and the delicate synaptic structures which connect them, are subjected to more than just the physical impact. Chemical reactions, some of which researchers are only just beginning to fully understand, cause invisible damage which takes weeks to repair.

If it happens again before the damage is repaired, the effect is amplified. As a result, having two mild head injuries in just three weeks can be equivalent to a major concussion, with serious long-term effects or even death.

And yes, that’s after a mild traumatic brain injury. We’re not talking here about victims of high speed road traffic collisions or soldiers being battered by high explosives. We are talking about exactly the type of injury where a rugby player is knocked out cold.

A huge upheaval is going on right now in the United States as the NFL faces law suits from former players suffering the horrendous, life-changing consequences of repeated head injuries. A number of different factors are at play in the NFL compared with rugby, not least of which is the level of recklessness traditionally encouraged by wearing a helmet and your own body weight in padding. In an effort to change this culture, the entire sport is having to change the way it coaches young players.

And rugby, a sport in which the players have become significantly bigger, faster and stronger in just a couple of generations, is going to face similar issues in a few years if it isn’t careful. Do all the gym work you want, it doesn’t make your skull thicker, and the energy imparted by those tackles is only getting higher.

And, just by the by, football needs to be more aware of this issue as well. A tragic series of deaths and Fabrice Muamba’s incredibly close call have transformed the sport’s approach to players’ cardiac health. Head injuries could be the sport’s next ticking time bomb.

The signs are not good according to a recent report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which looked at clubs’ awareness and use of the Consensus in Sport (CIS) guidelines for assessing concussion.

As reported in Science Omega: “The results revealed that 28 per cent of football clubs had not heard of the CIS guidelines. Only one in 10 clubs carried out concussion symptom scores and just half of teams who were aware of the guidelines used tests to measure both cognitive assessment and symptoms following a concussion.”

I desperately hope Jamie Roberts comes through this weekend in good health. And I hope some young footballer doesn’t find him or herself afflicted with long-term cognitive impairment after returning too soon after a concussion.

But I fear that at some point this issue is going to claim a life.

Today is the day

Never mind the negativity and the lies and the manic spraying of money on swing states, this election had debates that mattered, a great home video and binders full of women. And a hurricane. Cool.

There was a distinct sense of "gotcha" when Mr Romney produced his 47% moment; the feeling that in an unguarded moment the real man had been revealed. And by that I don't mean he doesn't care about the opinions of half the population of the country he wants to lead; more that he is prepared to say he doesn't care about their opinions in order to get people to give him money for his campaign.

After that Mr Romney performed a comeback in the first debate that shocked everyone, including most of his supporters and probably Mr Romney. President Obama was so bad that if it had been a horse race a stewards' inquiry would have followed.

In the subsequent debates President Obama became reacquainted as to the difference between his arse and elbow, while Mr Romney gave him a helping hand with his lovely little line about being brought "binders full of women". Sounds more like a Clinton policy initiative.

And then we got The Storm. Like a deus ex Atlantica, Sandy surged up from the Caribbean, and turned into a deliciously named Frankenstorm by sucking energy off a series of other weather systems and, it seemed, the Mitt Romney campaign. Not even he could pander to a storm, and all President Obama had to do was be as presidential as we know he can be.

Fortunately, he IS presidential and has good judgement when it comes to crises like this, and it showed as Republican New Jersey Governor Christ Christie was moved to paeans to the President.

And so now it's all about tonight, except that nearly 40% of Floridians have already voted in early voting. It was a 5-5 tie in the traditional early vote at the New Hampshire hamlet of Dixville Notch, which I think is great.

You really do have to love the whackiness of a democratic process which has been defined by a bootleg video and a hurricane. Bring it on!

Sportspeople not talking bollocks

High profile sports people are, mostly, idiots. Never mind the physical prowess or skill, when they begin opening their mouths it tends to be to moan, gloat or swear.

In the past couple of weeks we’ve been treated to the classy, asterisked verbiage of John Terry and Anton Ferdinand, the always-charming thoughts of Derek Chisora and David Haye, and today there is some magnificently self-serving bollocks from Luis Suarez.

Suarez bleats and whinges about the political power of Manchester United being repsonsible for his ban for racially abusing Patrice Evra. However, anyone who read the extensive documents released by the panel investigating his behaviour towards Patrice Evra was left with little doubt that the Uruguayan was unreliable, untrustworthy and guilty as sin.

Michael Johnson is a man for whom I must confess a certain degree of doey-eyed man love

So it comes as something of a relief when we are treated to some genuinely elevating and thoughtful offerings from sportspeople.

Stand up Michael Johnson and Bradley Wiggins, and take a bow. These two indulge not in cheeky references to gang rape or chiding about the sexual habits of an opponent’s mother. Neither seems possessed of Suarezian narcissism.

Michael Johnson is a man for whom I must confess a certain degree of doey-eyed man love, because his history-defining sprinting feats over 200m and 400m are connected to a highly articulate and sophisticated brain.

In today’s Daily Telegraph he speaks as eloquently as always, this time about what he perceives as the inappropriateness of Oscar Pistorius competing with able-bodied runners in the 400m, an event which Johnson graced and dominated.

"I consider Oscar a friend of mine, but he knows I am against him running, because this is not about Oscar; it’s not about him as an individual, it is about the rules you will make and put in place for the sport which will apply to anyone, and not just Oscar. If it was just about Oscar my position would be: ‘Absolutely, let him run.’"

One is left with the abiding impression that Johnson admires Pistorius but would have had clear and well-founded reservations about lining up alongside him in a race. I’m not sure I agree with Johnson but I sure as hell respect his opinion and would love to hear even more from him on this sort of subject.

And then there’s Wiggins, whose sideburns and sense of the moment have already catapulted him into Tour de France folklore.

First he ripped into a small number of journalists for their repeated, unjustifiable suggestions that he uses performance enhancing drugs. No snide remarks or haughty refusal to engage from our Wiggo, just a straighforward rebuttal laced with earthy language and blunt requests to shut hell up about the subject. The rest of the assembled media burst into applause, which is not something which happens often.

Then he earned the epithet Le Gentleman from the French media for holding up the peloton to allow arch rival Cadel Evans to catch up after suffering multiple punctures due to tacks being thrown on the road. Wiggins, it seems, is a man who unquestionably wants to win, but to do so cleanly and with a certain amount of dignity. A sort of anti-Terry if you like.

That was underlined by today’s dig at British celebrity culture: "It’s nice in sport when people stop you in the street and respect you for something you have achieved.”

So, well done Messrs Wiggins and Johnson. Everyone loves a winner, but winners who aren’t also complete losers are more rare and very welcome.

Something lost, something gained?

This morning's Today show featured the latest installment in the ongoing, possibly eternal, battle between police and the media over the latter's role in preventing and solving crime.

John Battle from ITN argued quite sensibly that the police shouldn't be allowed to simply demand their footage in a "fishing expedition" for possible crimes at the Dale Farm standoff.

Chief constable Andy Trotter, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, came right back with some pretty coherent points about the fact that they could only request this information with a court order.

This little vignette is a microcosm of the frenzied re-examination of the role of the media in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.

It demonstrates why, as a country, we should re-evaluate how the media functions within our society.

Those who dislike the tendency (some might say deep-seated desire) of some sectors of the media to drag up highly personal information and parade it as news would love to see strict rules of accountability for print media.

Editors, and not just those who particularly trade in muck raking, are outraged by the idea of politicians decreeing what they can and cannot print.

Somewhere in the midst of all this execration is a compromise position.

Journalists should be held to a high standard of accuracy, honesty and responsibility for their work. This includes not invading people's privacy unfairly, which is a judgement call and therefore always open to interpretation.

I believe this could be addressed by establishing a genuine journalists' qualification and oversight body along the lines of the GMC for doctors. All newspapers would be obliged to employ only journalists who are registered with this body, and it should have the power to train, strike off and fine its members

However, with such demands should come rights. Journalists who are members of this body should be allowed free access to a wider range of official public documents and events than is the case for the general public. In her well-argued piece last year, Heather Brooke pointed out that British journalists simply do not have the same level of access to such information as their American counterparts and are therefore less able to report freely.

Similarly, clearly defined rights to confidentiality with sources should be enshrined in the same way as doctor-patient confidentiality.

There are many other areas which might be addressed, including the sanctity or otherwise from police seizure of recorded material, but the fundamental principle is this: the media is immensely powerful and its journalists should be recognised as such. Grant a genuine, legislated balance of rights and responsibilities to journalists and newspapers and then a framework exists for the industry to function and grow effectively.

It will never be perfect and mistakes will always be made on both sides, but it is better than ineffective self regulation or heavy handed legislation which seeks only to limit and control.