The England national football team’s supporter’s band was refused entry to the their team’s opening fixture vs. France on Monday. It was presumed that an outcry from England supporters would immediately follow, leading to band becoming a cause celebre and having their status of ‘official’ reaffirmed by the FA, who would heroically force Ukranian football authorities to allow them back in for Friday’s tie vs. Sweden.

The England Supporters Band. Not as Pukka as a certain pie manufacturer would have you believe. Image: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Europe.

Unfortunately for the Sheffield based band, who, according to band leader John Hemmingham, haven’t missed playing at a game for “sixteen years“, the overwhelming emotion expressed by many fans was relief that they could finally watch an England match without having to tolerate the incessant honking of  ‘The Great Escape’, which has unfortunately become the soundtrack to our suspicions that the ‘Golden Generation’ are in fact made of cheap, gaudy tin.

A fact we will never escape. Please stop reminding us.

Besides. It’s about time these guys realised the world, and football, has moved on. No one, not even teams who’ve won stuff, wants to hear irrelevant 1960’s movie soundtracks belched out by Northern blokes fed on Pukka Pies.  Football these days is about lunacy, bravery, skill and great costumes. The official band should reflect this.

Let’s campaign to have the FA appoint Luzern based punk/alternative brass band Quä Quäger as the official soundtrack to England’s on-pitch travails. The governing body has already demonstrated that an English passport is not a requirement in the application process, and it would assist the players too.

The pressure and scrutiny that apparently affects their confidence would be lifted if, instead of watching them lumber about, we were all focussing on a bunch of mad Swiss people hurl themselves around a section of plastic seating to some hard rock favourites.

It can’t exactly hurt, can it?