Policy announcement: England and Euro 2004

It is with great regret that we at The Rockall Times announce today that we can offer no further coverage of what remains of England's participation in Euro 2004.

Despite the best efforts of teams of highly-trained satirists working through Sunday night, we have been unable to formulate one single pithy comment with regard to yesterday's performance against France during which £8bn worth of Premiership talent threw away a 1-0 lead against the Frenchies in two minutes of footballing madness.

In the circumstances, we feel that our sports correspondents' time would be better spent analysing competitions in which there is a greater comedy potential. Like crown green bowling. Accordingly, we have unclipped the flags from our cars, washed the red-and-white greasepaint from our faces, and thrown our celebratory beers into the North Atlantic.

That being said, we should confirm that despite the humiliation, the lads can at least take away the fact that they had the world champions at a disadvantage for the best part of 90 minutes, and this must at least stand us in good stead against mighty Switzerland and Croatia. After all, there are not many teams who could take the fight to the French and expect to come away with anything less than a complete humiliation.

And what about Rooney, eh? What a talent this young lad is. If England can take anything away from this game it's that he's a real prospect for the next World Cup. And David Beckham — he's a real prospect for the future, too. Sure, nerves got the better of the young lad from Romford on the night, but imagine what a threat he will be at the next World Cup.

Our post-match prognosis was confirmed via video phone interview with an informal gathering of England fans in Lisbon who had seen the game in person: "Well, it's a disappointment but we can take away plenty from this match," confirmed one thick-set man dressed in Stone Island jacket, Burberry baseball cap and throwing metal chairs at riot police. "You can't really blame a young, inexperienced team like this for chucking away a 1-0 lead in the last two minutes of injury time, so we're going to blame the Portuguese, if that's ok with you." At that point the video link began to break up as tear gas rained down on the Lisbon square in which England supporters were celebrating their plucky team's performance against the French.

Meanwhile, emergency squads of television pundits were last night airlifted into Lisbon to replace shell-shocked comrades simply too stunned to continue. ITV reported that the substitutes carried suitcases full of platitudes ready for emergency deployment during today's expected extended post mortem. The live production team confirmed that Terry Venables had completely exhausted the available stock of clichés — supposedly enough for two weeks — during the stunned post-match analysis which saw normally affable Des Lynam attempt to break out of the studio and attack Sven-Goran Eriksson with a meat cleaver.

Mr Lynam's actions would certainly meet with the approval of Sir Alf Ramsey, who we contacted via a Basingstoke medium cally Brenda. "They're all sacked, do you hear me?" ranted Alf. "Every fuc*king one of them is sacked!" he shouted for several minutes, before leaving an exhausted Brenda reaching for the cooking sherry.

So, while Wayne Rooney tonight consoles himself with a larger-than-normal meat pie milkshake and fries, and David Beckham consoles himself by rolling around in a room full of cash and naked Spanish strumpets, it is with regret that we draw a heavy curtain on our Euro 2004 coverage. That is The Rockall Times' formal policy regarding the England football squad.

Next week

It's coming home! Our plucky lads' 0-0 against mighty Switzerland means that if Croatia beat France 17-0 and we then might still have a chance — mathematically at least — to progress to the next round, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.