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Croatia: how did they, of all countries, end up our nemesis?

TONIGHT England face Croatia once again with a single question on the nation’s lips: how exactly did these bastards become our footballing nemesis? 

Two decades ago, they were just one more country of the former Yugoslavia recovering from a war too complicated and depressing to follow. We beat them to get to a Euros quarter-final, which was as it should be.

Then came October 2006, when against all precedent and good sportsmanship they beat us, throwing our hopes of qualifying for Euro 2008 into jeopardy, then only went and proved themselves thoroughly unpleasant the next year by doing it again.

Forced to note this impertinent habit of winning important games despite our having Wayne Rooney, we responded by winning our next two World Cup qualifying games against them and stopping them attending in 2010.

Expecting they had learned their lesson and would brush up on their manners henceforward, we let that be an end to the matter. And against any decent team it would have been.

Not Croatia. Unable to let it go, their proven inferiority still gnawing away, they dared challenge us in a 2018 World Cup semi-final. And despite the established and popular Gareth Southgate ‘it’s coming home’ narrative disgraced themselves with a win.

Don’t they have enough neighbouring states to hold grudges against without manufacturing a rivalry against us? Why must we be plagued by these chippy Dalmatians once again this evening?

Well, tonight should settle it once and for all. We’ll give them a good British nanny-style thrashing, sexual undertones present and correct, and they will be put in their proper place. Perhaps then they can save their enmity for Serbia.

Or they’ll draw or win, in which case it’s cheating. It’s nonsensical either way.

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If you're on a yacht, it serves you right

ANYTHING bad that happens to you while on board a yacht is your own fault, Britain has agreed. 

After a pair of retirees on a yacht in the English channel was fired upon by a Russian warship, the UK has confirmed even if they had been hit and sunk they would deserve no sympathy because of their yacht-bound situation.

Helen Archer of Stevenage said: “Ooh, ’we’re blameless! We were just sailing our boat that cost more than your flat near a Russian warship, and it shot at us!’ Bloody boomers.

“Once you climb aboard your special little seafaring vessel, probably called Windriding Winnie or some shit, and leave the mainland it’s officially your problem. Don’t come running to us if there’s a typhoon or whatever. You made your choice.

“From being captured by Somalian pirates to sucking off Leonardo DiCaprio, you knew the risks when you boarded the yacht and you did it anyway. Didn’t happen to me, did it? Because I’m not on a yacht.”

A spokesman for the Royal Yachting Association said: “Our member are, of course, superior to mere landlubbers and spend the majority of their time at sea sneering at them. But it does not follow we bear any responsibility when clocked in the head by a boom.

“Also, please note the Royal in our name. Other associations don’t have that.”

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