Listening to TalkSport this evening, they were questioning early arrivers to Wembley for tonight's England game as to their response to the players this evening. Are they going to boo? The response was mixed. Some saying definitely yes, some saying definitely no, some saying it depended on how pissed they got before kick-off. (Good luck with that - you can't buy a beer inside the stadium, apparently us footie fans are all such atavistic reprobates that we can't be sold alcohol, oh no...)
Anyway, this made me wonder whether I'd boo them. The fact is, I've always thought that it's about the shirt. In one respect, if you're booing an England player, you're booing the shirt, the England team entity, which is blameless in all this. And if you boo, you're booing the also blameless 13 players who were nowhere near South Africa and cannot be faulted for the dismal performances out there.
However. And it's a big one. Certain members of that team, I'm not going to name names but it's Ashley Cole and Wayne Rooney, deserve to be told exactly what people think of them. Cole for his ill-mannered and graceless comments about the support after the tournament, Rooney for his during the tournament, on which I've already commented here.
I think, on balance, I'd probably refrain from booing, personally - it's probably not going to bother the mercenary sods anyway, and can only help the opposition. But I have no words of reproach for those who do boo them tonight. They've earned it, on balance.
I'd expected people to vote with their feet... Why pay to go watch a game if you're just going to boo the team you're paying to support... But then I'm applying logic to people and in my experience of late there are many many (far too many) stupid people!
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