The Euro 2012 survival guide

THE LAST time I faked an interest in football, I was eleven years old.

It was at a birthday party and I told the boy sitting next to me I loved Packie Bonner. I had no idea who Packie Bonner was, but everyone seemed to like him after Euro 88. The boy just looked at me like I was a weirdo, and did not, as I had hoped, ask me to dance with him when ‘Ride on Time’ came on. So much for opening gambits. I have never flirted with soccer since.

More than twenty years later, and another Euro juggernaut is bearing down on us. The greatest teams on the continent are gathering together in Poland and Ukraine to battle it out for supremacy. Ireland are in group C, and we’re about to lose our minds again, collectively. Thankfully this time I don’t have to pretend to know, or care, anything about it. I won’t be able to tell my Xavis from my Ozils, my Benzemas from my Keanes and I’m perfectly happy.