God Save the Beth!

Those of you who bleed red and white, cringe at the words "Hand of God", have St. George's Cross tucked away in a safe place and hate penalty kicks with the white hot passion of a thousand buring suns will know that at 6:30 pm GMT on Saturday the Three Lions will line up against Israel in Euro 2008 qualifying. Now, England has not exactly been tearing up the qualifying rounds. You may recall an earlier post which recounted your intrepid reporter's attendance at the match against Macedonia at Old Trafford which ended in a scoreless draw. A few days later, England was embarrassed at Croatia. Dark days indeed. These early poor performances have led to desparate times and much knashing of teeth in Blighty.

What is to be done? If only a saviour could be found. Michael Owen? He's still 6 months away. David Beckham? He's still counting his money and pretending to be injured. How can we duplicate the recent successes? The questions must be asked: when we won, what did we do right? Who is England's talisman?

I've spent a good deal of time thinking about this. Hours on the train. Hours at work. Today, the flash of genius touched me. England did enjoy a brief spell of success at this summer's World Cup, so I asked myself, what did all those games have in common? ... It came to me in a flash ... During all the games that England won ...

... Beth had a beer.

Not only that, but England scored the same number of goals as Beth enjoyed beers during the game. BETH IS THE TALISMAN! The sloshier Beth gets, the better England plays. So, fear not. I promise you that Beth will be enjoying two pints of cold, frosty lager during the first half of Saturday's game and as many pints as is necessary to ensure victory in the second half. She will not falter. Victory is ours!

Send her victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign o'er us
God save the Beth!