One of the best things about the World Cup is the experiences you have while supporting your team with your mates. The competition brings about an atmosphere that harks back to a more innocent time, a time when women were seen and not heard, an almost childlike time where what was important was you and your friends enjoying something you love together.

Between me and the lads I’d decided that the best place to watch England’s final group game would be in the pub. We went down the local – it’s a bistropub, I won’t name it because loads of you will turn up and try to be mates – figuring it’d be wise to get there early for the 15.00 kick off. Unfortunately when we rocked up at 14.30 it was packed with England fans. Proper England fans, mind. The kind of fans who when you ask them who they support reply: “England”. They were decked out in the shirt, red and white clown wigs and the St. Jack’s cross. Real fans.

Though I love fans such as these we had to stand, which annoyed me. The staff definitely know who I am because I remind them every time I’m in there. There must have been a way they could have got us some seats if they’d tried. Rude. This was irritating but at least it isn’t one of those pubs where they ban England shirts because they think it’s racist. These pubs seem to think it’s the shirts themselves that cause trouble, as if they’ll leap off of peoples’ backs and start abusing passing Muslims.

Given that we’d been drinking since 14.30 we were all pissed by the time kick off approached. The national anthem got me fired up. I remember the first time I heard The Sex Pistols’ cover of it. It changed my life. They were one of those bands that you never forget hearing for the first time, like Nirvana or The Lightning Seeds. I thought of English heroes like Winston Churchill, God and Kevin Pietersen. Come on England!

How dare Slovenia even turn up in the face of such might?! How long have they even been a country for anyway? I don’t think countries should be allowed to compete until they’ve proven that they’re serious by lasting for longer than 10 years without declaring war on themselves.

The biggest positive going into the game was that Jamie Carragher had got himself banned. He’s a liability and if I was Capello I’d drop him. Out of the plane. Then I’d probably have some pasta.

I’d just got my first pear flavoured Magners when the game kicked off and I felt a little apprehensive. “Please don’t let it go to penalties,” I said aloud. “It can’t go to penalties mate,” said a nearby punter and I realised he was right, it couldn’t. We’re way too good for that to happen. From that point on I was proven right.

Though Glen Johnson spent the majority of the first half darting around like a dog looking for its own balls on a waltzer England played well and James Milner eventually twatted in a cross that Jermain Defoe got on the end of. Bang! Woof! Balls! 1-0!

The pub went mental. Fatto visibly lost weight, I went off like a banter volcano, comedy lava flowing everywhere. It was legendary. It was just a matter of time before the next one went in, and then the one after that.

It turns out that this wasn’t the case. To be honest it got boring in the second half and I was mostly playing Tetris on my phone but the point is that we made it through. Fatto seemed a bit gutted that we’d have to play Germany in the next round but who cares? We beat them in ’66 and we’ll do it again. None of them are German anyway.

OK so we have a difficult route to the final but if you want to win the thing then you have to beat the best teams at some point anyway. The point is that the lads had given me, the lads, all of the other lads and their respective lads something to enjoy while being lads, and for me and the lads that’s all that matters. Come on England!

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