Boo Hiss!

At around 20:45 on 12/6/12 the Euro2012 match between Poland and Russia finished in a 1-1 draw.

Personally I was expecting so much more because in the white corner you had Poland who as co-hosts are expected to do well even if they still carry the shame of never winning a game in the European finals. In the recently back to red corner you had a Russian team who are in frighteningly good form. So much so that in their opening Group A game against the Czech Republic I switched over when they were 2-1 up thinking that they were going to settle for that in order to avoid showing all the other teams in the competition just how good they are. They ended up winning 4-1.

Added to that you have the fact that at the end of the second world war Stalin's USSR, Churchill's UK and Eisenhower's USA got together to decide how to divide up Europe after the fall of Nazi Germany. The three of them concluded that the best thing to do would be to move Poland around 30km to the west and allow the USSR to occupy the country for the next 45 years. During this time NATO made Poland one of the major battle grounds of the cold war using the Catholic church and the trade union movement as the focal points for resistance to Soviet rule. As a result Russia and Poland are still not exactly friends

So the tonight's Poland V Russia match ended in a dull 1-1 draw. It started so well when Dzagoev put Russia ahead on 37 minutes but then most of the alphabet equalised in the second half and both sides decided to leave it at that to avoid upsetting the football hooligans who on Russia day had been clashing violently in Warsaw. This is the third Euro2012 game to have been marred by some sort of fan violence and I've noticed that all of them have occurred in Poland. Before the tournament started I noticed the Polish police have been taking a very aggressive stance towards football fans which could be a contributing factor.

Actually thinking about it it would probably be useful for me to pay more attention to the hooliganism but at this rate I'm struggling to keep up with the football. I'm definitely taking tomorrow off though because there's a rumour I might be going back to Brighton for the next England game.