England 2 Estonia 0

Match 30/15/1235 - Friday, 9th October 2015 - European Championship Q

England (1) 2 Walcott 45, Sterling 85
Estonia (01) 0
Attendance: 75,427

Entrance: £40
Programme: £6
Mileage: 100/1,889

Match Report

When grown men are reduced to flicking elastic bands to occupy themselves, you can safely assume the entertainment on offer is pretty damn awful. Using the old cliche, watching paint dry would have been a far preferable use of 90 minutes of my time.

This qualifying campaign will be my last as a member of the England Supporters Club, a membership that I've retained since before 1996 and the days when it was simply known as the England Travel Club. As a football team, England can only beat what is put before them and there is little room for complaint against a side carrying a perfect record going into their last fixture.

But UEFA and FIFA's desire to expand their competitions has diluted qualifying and meaningful games are becoming a rarity. Since Wembley reopened back in 2007, there have only been two such games both against Croatia and to a lesser extent, those against Montenegro and Poland in the last campaign.

England's sole threat in this group was Switzerland and when they were beaten in Berne in the opening match, the rest was a foregone conclusion.

I've made it no secret on this blog that I've long since fell out of love with Wembley. Thugs, drunks and lousy matches have turned it into an expensive chore.

The match itself did nothing more than prove my point. England won without breaking sweat. It took 30 minutes for Joe Hart to lay a glove on the ball and the biggest question mark against the home side was that they took 45 minutes to open the scoring.

A big plus was Ross Barkley, whose pass opened up the Estonians for Theo Walcott to break the offside trap and open the scoring.

Two rows in front, one couple wandered in with just 15 minutes of the first half remaining and departed after 15 of the second. By the 70th minute people were leaving in their droves and when I picked a random 82nd minute to leave, somebody in front said "turn the lights out when you go".

That 82nd minute departure meant I missed Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's goal, but only having 20,000 in front of me in the queue for the tube rather than 75,000 made it worthwhile.

I'll continue to take in England games when, or more likely if, they are worthwhile. I just won't have the pressure of caps for tournaments to come in Russia and Qatar to worry about.