England's Year/ View from the sideline: A long-suffering England fan, James Helm, looks back in anguish at 2006.
Last Sunday night I kept an annual date with my sofa and watched the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year Awards. For this English sports fan, whose bread and butter is football, rugby union and cricket, the show provided the chance to look back in anguish. Football first. The familiarity of enormous hype followed by damp squib. In a sports shop in Birmingham in freezing February, I noticed this offer: buy the new England shirt and get your money back if they win the World Cup. The shop was doing a lively trade.
I was lucky enough to go to Germany, for what was a memorable tournament. Unfortunately, the England team didn't provide many of the memories. Maybe Joe Cole's goal against Sweden sticks in the mind. The support was vast and noisy and, in the main, well-behaved. Shame the team didn't entertain them.
The quarter-final with Portugal had a ghastly inevitability to it. Rooney departed; penalties beckoned. My four-year-old son, who hadn't witnessed previous disasters in major tournaments, already seemed to know how these things go. Before the first spot-kick was taken, he calmly announced: "England are going to lose, Daddy."
I'm not sure about this theory that those awful English journalists whip everyone into a frenzy of flag-waving expectation that the team only has to turn up to ensure the World Cup will arrive on a plane for Luton Airport.
Expectations probably are too high, and England are plainly neither the best nor the worst in the world, but somewhere hovering in between. The fact is they have some good players who can shine in the Premiership.
As for the egg-chasers: the chariot is indeed swinging low. The Croker crowd can rub their hands in anticipation of the now annual victory over England.
Whenever I interviewed Mr O'Driscoll and co this autumn I asked variations of the question: "What's gone wrong with England?" Typically, they were too pleasant and diplomatic to throw back their heads and cackle. But there was agreement that the England lot envy the Irish system, the one that helps produce a contented, successful Ireland team. So a bloke called Structure is copping the blame.
And then there's the dear old cricket. Last year provided the epic drama of England's Ashes victory. I have watched the full DVD gift set of the entire series at least three times. Now, my disturbed nights spent beside the radio are being rewarded with defeats Down Under.
The second Test was gut-wrenching. I rang my friend and from his seat at the game he provided ball-by-ball commentary. Australia, he said, simply came out on the final morning steely-eyed and confident of their ability to win. And win they did, in an amazing game - a tribute to one of cricket's greatest teams. The little urn will surely soon be back in Aussie hands.
Perhaps the real causal factor is something called Open Top Bus Syndrome. It's a complaint that involves a huge high, brought on by mass adulation in a public place, but destined to soon disappear. Book an open-top bus for a lap of Trafalgar Square, visit Downing Street, sip the fizzy, and you're doomed to suffer OTBS.
Ah, 2007. I don't expect to hear glasses clinking in bars across Ireland, but with the rest of the Ashes series to come, a cricket and rugby World Cup, and more football Euro qualifiers, I'm hoping for a better sporting year.
