Dust off the bunting. Prepare the open-top bus parade. Fetch Baddiel and Skinner out of storage. Joseph Calleja, Edward de Bono, George Vella, Marc Storace, Miriam Gauci, Michael Mifsud, can you hear me? Lorenzo Gafà, baroque architect of the 17th century and designer of the Church of St Roque in Valletta, can you hear me? Your boys took a hell of a beating! A hell of a beating!
On a still and chilly night at Wembley, England continued their irrepressible swagger towards next summer’s European Championships in Germany by comfortably dispatching Malta. Naturally the cynics, the doom-mongers and the Gareth-haters will be tempted to point out that at 171st in the world, England’s opposition were ranked just below Fiji and just above Bermuda. Ignore them. This is the cauldron of international football, and you can only beat whatever tiny Mediterranean island nation is put in front of you.
