Andy Richardson: Eat, play, love: excuses are great match

Just like last weekend, there’ll be a host of people who’ll make their excuses not to participate in something supposedly more important in order that they can watch the match.

Weddings seemed to provide people with the biggest fixture clash as England defeated Sweden. Our newspapers were filled with people who were taking mobile phones into churches and registry halls so that they could keep up with the England/Sweden score while saying I Do.

I’m sure, somewhere, someone would have been saying their vows at the exact same moment that Harry Maguire was powering the ball into the back of Sweden’s net with the power of an Anthony Joshua fist. And, rather than humbly saying: ‘I do’, the groom would have shouted: ‘Yeeessssssss’ – much, no doubt, to the pleasure of his bride and amusement of the vicar.

Others were choosing to avoid work/family/shopping and more besides so that they could watch England earn their place in the last four. They offered pitiful excuses – the dog’s ill, I’ve got to mow the lawn, I’ve got a flat tyre and can’t find the spare – only to give the game away by sharing their joy on Twitter and FaceBook as they were photographed jumping three feet off the ground in their local pub with a pint of Carlsberg in their hand.

Choosing between football and something more sensible came early in my life. As a kid, we were herded to church on Sundays to play games with adults who turned out to be entirely disreputable and nefarious. Even at the age of five, the prospect of believing that a guy herded two of each type of animal onto a giant ship then set sail was utterly unbelievable.

“How would there have been enough headroom for giraffes?” I asked the Sunday school teacher.

“Because God fixed it.”

“Okay, cool. But if they were on the seas for a while, as they appeared to have been, the lions would have just worked their way around the boat and eaten everything.”

“Shut up. Pray.”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine. I will. But I was also wondering how Noah got Kuchi dogs from land-locked Afghanistan if he was in a boat? And everyone knows the Belarusian black pied pig wouldn’t have lasted five minutes on a ship with a pork-scratching loving Noah.”

“May God forgive you.”

My atheism has grown stronger the more I’ve listened to the likes of Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennet and Harris – not to mention the brilliant Ricky Gervais. But then I like to think there’s a little bit of atheism in all of us, even the most religiously devout. After all, if there are 4,200 religions on the world, then those who choose to follow only one God are, by default, signalling their disbelief in the other 4,199. Vis a vis, they are 99.977 per cent atheist. I guess I’ve gone the whole hog and done away with the 0.023 per cent of Gods that the religious believe in.

The closest I came to a conversion was during a holiday in Dublin. A group of Hare Krishna monks were dancing along the road outside our hostel, dressed prettily in saffron robes. A Canadian traveller and I stepped outside to see what the commotion was and were given a ticket to a free buffet. The monks had prepared a vegan feast and eating their food meant we had more money for beer. Nice. God moves in mysterious ways. We were asked to sing Rama Rama Krishna Krishna before tucking in, though I think we got confused and sang Rama Lama Ding Dong then held out our hands and said: “Feed me, now.”

The food was alright. And maybe if they’d have added a little meat, I’d have found it in me to pledge allegiance to A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and invest in a set of saffron robes. Actually, the robes would have been the final straw. Saffron’s just not my colour. Maybe if they dressed in navy suits with a fancy red trim I could have been persuaded. The idea of standing in Regent Street haranguing passers-by with gleeful happiness while encouraging them to sing sounds like the perfect way to pass time. And the lyrics to Hare Hare Rama Rama Krishna are almost as easy to remember as that other popular summer classic, C’mon Engurland.

But I’ve strayed off the subject. Be gone religion. Be gone hare krishnas. Be gone lost weekends in Dublin and talk of red trimmed robes. This weekend is World Cup Weekend and, for the second weekend running, I plan to write about the footb. . .