I was in Rygge Airport in Norway when England kicked off their world cup campaign against the USA. I was about to fly home, but thought I could catch the first half in the airport. I thought wrong.
“Sorry, we don’t have that channel.”
My best option was to follow the game through the twitter-commentary of the people I follow. I’m going to avoid going on about how this is ‘the first Twitter World Cup’. But it was interesting. This – for example – is how I realised that the USA had equalised – and that Robin Green had done a David James. Bottom to top, obviously:
Here it is in one stream of commentary:
“Rob Green #fail #ENG — shit — Er, why isn’t Joe hart playing? — BOOM #usa — oopsie #worldcup”
There’s something quite poetic about it. It told me everything I needed to know, with a colloquial edge you don’t quite get from official commentary. And it all arrived on my phone before any ‘official’ update.
Of course, not everyone watching on TV got to see the goal either. ITV HD made a colossal (if football is important to you) fuck up and cut to adverts seconds before England scored. Amusingly, this has made the news almost as much as Robin Green’s mistake has. The other stations revelled in being given the licence to cover their competitor’s failings. Sky News even replayed the exact sequence to show how bad ITV viewers had it.
We might not be the best footballing nation, but at least we enjoy to wallow in things when they go balls up ;)
