Tied and emotional

The Girl was spending a day at a friend's house, and the Boy as usual was round at his Buddy's, leaving the Man and me with a free afternoon. How lovely, I thought. Even though it's raining, maybe we can go off and do something nice and cultural or perhaps see a movie.

But apparently there was some sporting event on that the Man just had to see.

England playing the USA competitively at football (ok then, soccer) for the first time in sixty years. Fair enough, I guess we had to see that.

We headed into Albany to Wolff's Biergarten, which was making an event of it - they'd closed off the street and set up a marquee with four large TV screens.

The place was packed, mostly not with English fans. There were several people dressed up as Uncle Sam. Even before kick-off, there was thunderous booing every time Wayne Rooney's face appeared on the screen. We kept a low profile - but somehow found ourselves in a little cluster of fellow England supporters (at least one of them was Mexican).

Great moment in the opening minutes when Gerrard scored for England - yay! Not so great when Green fumbled the ball and let in the US goal - groan! The Man stood beside me miserably for the rest of the match - honestly, men and sport, why do they put themselves through it?

The TVs were cranked to full volume, and the crowd around us bayed U-S-A continually at the tops of their lungs. When the match finally ended - a 1-1 draw/tie (but I'm sure you already know that) and we left the marquee, we realised we had actually become deaf.

I was genuinely surprised at how many Americans turned out in the rain to watch a sport I thought they weren't very interested in, and at how passionate they seemed to be about beating us. History runs deep: after the first goal a drunk behind me referred to the England players, jovially, as "....ing Redcoats".

And how did I feel about it all, given that I couldn't care less about sport and dislike displays of nationalism? Deep down do I really wish England had won hands down against my generous host nation?

Hell yeah!