When England were thrashed by Croatia

This is a superb poem that appeared as the Beachcomber column in today's Daily Express. Wonderful stuff! There's also a story concerning Wednesday evening after the game when the driver of a Tube train at Wembley Park station said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry for the delay, there seems to be a man on the track in front of us. Let's hope it's Steve McClaren!'

The gloom of the nation has never been worse
Wherever we turn there are risks
The Government can only bluster and curse
When it loses our data on disks
Our discontent's winter has firmly set in
No blooms now of rose or acacia
All hopes for the future were thrown in the bin
When England were thrashed by Croatia

Our train of contentment has come off the track
The weather grows wetter and wetter.
Our army's bogged down on the streets of Iraq,
Afghanistan isn't much better.
The world is a terribly dangerous place
From the streets of New York out to Asia,
But saddest of all for the whole human race
Was England's defeat by Croatia.

This once proud great nation was humbled indeed,
When England's team under McClaren
Lacked skill and cohesion and brilliance and speed,
And as for ideas, they were barren.
They earn enough money to fill a large tent,
Including all payments ex-gratia.
Though many would say they weren't worth a brass cent
The way they succumbed to Croatia.

There's carbon dioxide polluting the air,
There's panic around Northern Rock.
There's street crime and muggings and drugs everywhere
With police overworked round the clock.
And football? We couldn't back England to beat
A team full of Japanese geisha
The way that they played when they suffered defeat
At the feet of that team from Croatia.

The nation's in ruins; it's crumbling away.
We're all getting deeper in debt.
We read more bad news in the papers each day
To add to our national fret.
There's wet rot and dry rot and pale peeling paint.
Now shaming each porch and each fascia,
Yet ne'er has our pride felt so awfully faint
As that evening we lost to Croatia.

The terrorists try to make all our lives hell,
There are fraudsters depleting our cash.
And councils proposing (or so I've heard tell)
To charge for removing our trash.
Poor England's performance was spotless, some say,
As a vanload of dogs from Dalmatia.
(A region where holidaymakers can play
On the southwestern coast of Croatia.

The only small solace I have to report,
Despite what the football fans natter,
Is that one more defeat for the country at sport
Does not, in a real sense, matter.
They can't win in Europe, perhaps they should try
America or Australasia.
Or some other place where the fans' hopes won't die
As they did 'neath the might of Croatia.