No parallels in game of two halves

HALF-TIME in Port Elizabeth and it’s parallel universe time again. Remember the movie Sliding Doors, when Gwyneth Paltrow’s life split in two when she missed her train? On RTÉ, England might have held a half-time lead over Slovenia but the carriage doors had slammed firmly in their faces.

A stickler for punctuality, Eamon Dunphy was pulling out of the station. “England haven’t done all that much since the goal. They don’t look themselves, they look uptight. It will be scramble over the line job against a very poor side.” Conductor Whelan agreed: “They didn’t kick on. I think they got worse after the goal.”

Unfortunately for tardy Gwyn, her life quickly unravelled and so too it seems has Wayne Rooney’s. “Things are not right. How do you reduce Rooney to a shivering wreck?” Eamo felt that fear factor had replaced X-Factor as the pulse of a once-great nation. “Don’t forget Rob Green; his life is over, in a certain kind of way.”