Football is based on desperation. All clubs are desperate in one form or another - desperate to succeed, desperate to survive, desperate to stay where they are, desperate that things get no worse, desperate to arrest the slide.

The traditional dress of the Australian cricketer is the baggy green cap on the head and the chip on the shoulder. Both are ritualistically assumed

Penalties are not football. They are not even as television people keep telling us, great drama. They are cheap melodrama.

Sven must have neglected to pay tribute to one of those strict Nordic gods. But instead of cursing Eriksson himself, Thor has done a still crueller thing and cursed the England strikers. I can only assume that Eriksson was never informed of this curse, otherwise he might have more than a 17-year-old up his sleeve.

Football is based on desperation. All clubs are desperate in one form or another - desperate to succeed, desperate to survive, desperate to stay where they are, desperate that things get no worse, desperate to arrest the slide.

Acquiring the trick of listening to birds will teach you how better to enjoy life and how better to endure it

What politician ever thinks beyond 4 or 5 years? But such thinking is hopelessly inadequate for the big questions that involve the fabric of the world we live in