As England make their excuses and leave the competitive bit of the World Cup after just two matches, there seem to be plenty of people quoting Einstein's definition of insanity as doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. Danny Kelly cited it on his TalkSport show this morning, for example, as did Matthew Norman in the Daily Telegraph.
But the endlessly repeated pattern of England underperforming at major tournaments (when they qualify) reminds me instead of Russell Braddon's excellent satire The Year of the Angry Rabbit (1964). This is the Australian prime minister explaining why he's appointed such a duffer as minister of defence:
'General Sir Alan Jacks has never once, since 1940, been right about anything. It is totally unreasonable to expect that any man, unless he be possessed of supernatural powers, can sustain such a record much longer. Soon, therefore, he's going to break it. Any day now, General Sir Alan Jacks is going to be right. And when, soon, he is, I want him, gentlemen, to be right not just on behalf of my government, but also on behalf of Australia.'
I know that England have been getting everything wrong for forty-eight years, but surely it's just a question of holding their nerve?
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