ON THE COUCH:Brilliant England continue their relentless march to glory. But wait . . .

THERE WAS a certain injustice to the blame-game that followed England’s wobbly opening to the World Cup, the consensus seeming to be that poor old Robert Green was entirely at fault for their woes. The truth is that it was actually ITV’s Clive Tyldesley who provided the game’s turning point when, after Steven Gerrard had scored, with 86 minutes still to go, he declared: “Ah, this might be fun!”

Call us Mystic Meg, but we found ourselves humming Pete Seeger's Where Have All the Flowers Gone?at that moment.

True, the tune is about the futility of war, not the futility of pumping long balls up to Emile Heskey all night, but its refrain – “when will they ever learn?” – was, we thought, sort of apt.

(Flashback . . . 2006 finals . . . five minutes to go . . . Gerraaaaaard! . . . Clive: “It looks like England have beaten Sweden for the first time in 38 years!” . . . injury time . . . Henrik Larsson – you know yourself).

Kevin “there’s only one team that’s going to win it now and that’s England!” Keegan, of course, knows better than most the dangers of dangling carrots in the face of Fate, and Dan Petrescu’s injury-time winner for Romania in 1998 is probably still quite fresh in his mind. He is, then, more careful these days. He didn’t, for example, describe Green as a goalkeeper who never makes a mistake before Saturday’s game, contenting himself with a more cautious “he just gets better and better”.

Adrian Chiles, though, was more preoccupied with the selection of Heskey, so he turned to special guest pundit Patrick Vieira for some reassurance. What were Heskey’s special qualities?

“Eez a big lad,” said Patrick, and that was good enough for Adrian.

In fairness to the big lad, he created Gerrard’s goal, the one that had Clive anticipating a fun-packed evening.

But then Green suffered a moment you wouldn’t wish on anyone. Except, maybe, John Terry.

“The usual mix of hope and horror,” said Adrian at half-time, but he remained upbeat, noting that the “American defence just can’t deal with us at all, can it?” And that Heskey had been the business, a sugestion that had his panel nodding as one.

“Eez been winning every single ball in ze air, I think he was ze top man up front,” said Patrick. Everyone happy, then.

Meanwhile, over on RTÉ, the panel struggled to agree on a verdict for England’s first-half display, John Giles opting for “awful”, Graeme Souness choosing “miserable” and Eamon Dunphy picking “terrible”.

There was, though, unanimity when it came to assessing Heskey, the conclusion being that, although he got his head to most of the Garryowens hoofed his way, the ball ended up with the opposition 75 per cent of the time.

Second half. “You are not in the middle of a nightmare, this really is happening,” said Clive. The old ones, eh?

Actually, that was Sky’s Mark Robson describing our rugby setback in New Zealand. “Ireland are having the gizzards ripped from them,” he sighed, a fate that will, most probably, befall Green when he gets home.

So, 1-1. But Gareth Southgate, who gets paid for this kind of stuff, reminded us that England had also drawn their first game in 1966, a factoid that was as useful as Gary Lineker’s revelation earlier in the day that Argentina has never won the World Cup when the official mascot had not worn a hat. “And this year’s mascot, a leopard, does not wear a hat.” Diego? Yiz might as well go home now.

We then learnt ITV HD viewers had missed Gerrard’s goal because the channel ran an ad at that precise moment, and listening to their panel after the game you had to wonder if they’d missed the entire proceedings. England were fabulous, Gerrard was awesome, Heskey was brilliant, Glen Johnson was excellent, and so on. It seemed as if we had just witnessed the reincarnation of the 1970 Brazil team.

“It was a very, very good performance, good enough to win any game,” said Kev. And he meant it too.

“Zey dominated from ze start until ze end, zey keep ze ball really well, Emile Heskey was fantastic up front,” said Vieira, praised by Adrian for being “a very reassuring presence”, ie, “Just tell us we’re brill, regardless of the evidence, and you’ll be welcome any time.”

Back on RTÉ words very nearly failed the panel, as the hoof-fest did not quite float their boat. “They were as poor tonight as they were under (Sven-Goran) Eriksson,” said Giles, digging out his ultimate insult for the occasion.

“I cannot believe they’ve been that bad tonight,” said Souness.

“Even Wayne Rooney looked ordinary tonight,” said Dunphy, humbly-ish retracting his forecast that England would go a long way in the tournament.

While Alan Hansen came over all Gilesie-esque on the BBC, noting with alarm England’s inability to hold on to the ball, Alan Shearer was keeping the faith. “Having seen that half I can guarantee that England will qualify,” he said after watching 45 minutes of Algeria v Slovenia.

They probably will do too, but altogether now: “When will they ever learn, when will they ev-er learn?”