England - 3 Ukraine- 0: Lightning struck the nearby Metro station, but this was a mellow night for England. There was gratification in the sight of Manchester City's Shaun Wright-Phillips coming on to get his first cap and then his first international goal.
The side was already 2-0 up by then as the excellent David Beckham and Michael Owen scored to silence talk of a purge of the old guard. That was pleasing, and there was another factor to engross those who came to the ground.
With St James's Park far from capacity, England could have tried to shore up the revenue by selling rotten tomatoes alongside match programmes.
Newcastle supporters, antagonised by Kieron Dyer's reported huffiness over the position he is asked to fill in his club's line-up, might have been glad of missiles with which to pelt him upon his second-half appearance. When he did come on, boos and jeers were hurled.
There was little else beforehand to make people talk heatedly. No matter how a public left jaded and disappointed by Euro 2004 wished to be relieved of their torpor, Sven Goran Eriksson was only concerned in easing his usual side back into life before the 2006 World Cup qualifiers begin in Austria and Poland.
If the footballers were familiar, they at least tried initially to demonstrate their vigour, with six of them, under the new limit on friendly-fixture substitutions, confident that they would be withdrawn long before the point of exhaustion was reached.
In the first half the effort went unrewarded for 27 minutes as Ukraine defended in a style unfamiliar to the Premiership.
Alan Smith, the one marginally experimental selection, had, for example, to contend with the dogged man-marking of Volodymyr Yezerskiy. The fact that the visitors stand 71st in the world rankings showed, however, that their performances are not as solid as their planning.
The flakiness was obvious when Andrei Nesmachnyi passed poorly inside the area and Beckham pounced to serve up the 12th-minute cross that Smith could not meet with an overhead kick.
Ukraine were unable to extend David James fully before the interval, but they did hint at the damage a more ruthless counter-attacking side could do to England.
However, even before he had put England ahead, Beckham had looked in the mood to quell Oleg Blokhin's team.
The captain was abetted by the liberty Eriksson accorded him to explore the full width of the midfield, even winning the odd tackle as he gave credence to his claim he's lithe again after letting himself become muscle-bound prior to Euro 2004. The breakthrough for England came with a cross from the right, but it was not Beckham who supplied it.
After 27 minutes the centre back, John Terry, reliving his youth as a midfielder, sent the ball bouncing low behind the Ukraine defence. A lunging Beckham poked it over the line, hurting goalkeeper Oleksandr Shovkovskyy in the process.
The game had been conducted earnestly enough for pain to be inflicted. When Owen had profited from a Steven Gerrard interception and was about to burst past Andrei Rusol in the 10th minute, the sweeper threw out his right arm at throat height to stop him. On another evening, there might have been a red card instead of a yellow.
In their opposition to Dyer, the crowd were all the more eager to cheer Beckham, an option rarely exercised here for former Manchester United figures.
The captain had been instrumental in the second goal, sweeping over the precise ball in the 50th minute that implored Owen to head past Shovkovskyy.
Wright-Phillips could safely be introduced for his debut then and, having eased himself in, recorded the third goal after 72 minutes, showing his pace to latch on to a slack pass and sprint to the penalty area before finishing with a low, angled drive.
ENGLAND (4-4-2): James; G Neville (Johnson, half-time), King, Terry, A Cole; Beckham, Butt (Wright-Phillips, 52), Lampard (Jenas, 74), Gerrard (Dyer, half-time); Smith (Defoe, half-time), Owen. Subs: Robinson, Upson, Carragher, Hargreaves, Vassell, Dyer, Defoe, Kirkland.
UKRAINE (3-4-2-1): Shovkovskyy; Fedorov, Rusol, Yezerskiy; Husyev, Tymoschuk, Shelayev, Nemachnyi; Vorobyey, Rotan; Shevchenko (Voronin, 52). Subs: Gusin, Rebrov, Kormyltsev, Zakarlyuka, Nazarenko, Radchenko, Matyukhin, Reva. Booked: Rusol, Tymoschuk.
Referee: M McCurry (Scotland).
Guardian Service
