They Think It's All Over....

...it is now!

So the world cup dream comes to an end and England come up short.

Realistically we should have had no expectation of them getting as far as they did, but, having got to the final, there was definitely a feeling of perhaps they could / should just have done it...

In some ways, the 2007 tournament was more enjoyable than 2003 - despite the end result. There was less predictability and some great upsets. The gap between the top teams and smaller teams seemed much less than in previous tournaments. There's talk about reducing the number of teams to 16 for 2011, I think this would ruin the tournament for the smaller teams, who showed that they could mostly at least compete.

England's games in the knockout stages were all cliffhangers and they did fantastically to re-group after the pool game against South Africa and showed some real character and guts to make it through to the final.

However, I hope that those running the game don't use this performance as an excuse to paper over the cracks and rest on their laurels for three years like they did after the 2003 final. England need to start building now for 2011, that means bringing in new players and new ideas in a timeframe which gives them a chance to build a team capable of winning the next world cup.