Liked this article from the London Times......Ashes to ashes as...

Liked this article from the London Times......
Ashes to ashes as Aussies bash the Poms again By Simon Barnes

AT FIRST it was hard to know what to burn: I’m not one of those people who buys Michael Owen’s old betting slips or David Beckham’s hair-drier in charity auctions. In the end I chose to incinerate a plastic football lying unloved and deflated in the garden. It had the right kind of banality about it. The ashes will be placed in an urn and presented to Sven-Goran Eriksson with the words: “In loving memory of English football.” I hope they will be sent to Australia, unlike the cricketing Ashes which reside at Lord’s. For last night Australia beat England at football. They won 3-1, having secured victories at Test match cricket, one-day cricket and Davis Cup tennis. Had you noticed that Australian teams have a marked taste for beating the Poms? Of course you had, but someone should really have told Eriksson. Harried by the crazy dominance of English club football over the international side, he opted to make this an unabashed practice game with a different team for each half. No one explained to him that Australians don’t do practice games, least of all against the Poms. No one explained to him that it’s not a good idea for Englishmen to patronise Australians, either. What happened was that the England team — that is, both England teams — went out for a kickabout and Australia went out for a full-blooded football match. England thought it all came down to a question of class, and so it proved. England simply oozed class — and all of it third. It will become one of the landmark humiliations of England’s footballing history. It stands comparison with the most embarrassing defeat of all: when England lost to the US in the World Cup of 1950. This was less horrific, because it was“not a competitive match”. Australia, however, realised that a game between two sides tends to have a competitive element to it. The fumes of the molten plastic affront my nostrils. Still, it had to be done. And it could be worse. I could have been watching in a Sydney bar.