Kellner with tips on finding a pub to watch England play (from The Guardian).
Hard to disagree with any of the points but the sneery / false-cheery tone makes me suspect that Kellner is exactly the sort of fellow I’d leave my hard-won seating to avoid. He’s right that if you can find a decent, uncrowded boozer you have got yourself a result before the game’s kicked off. Guaranteeing decent and quiet is quite another matter.
The great unspoken is that, for this tournament at least, there’s rarely a need to go to the pub to watch the game: only occasionally will cruel scheduling and dwindling annual leave conspire to force you to watch somewhere near work.
So, home or pub? It can be a tight decision: the sweaty sociability of the pub against the comfort of the home; the expense of pub boozing against the (relative) economy of kicking back with a few cheap cans from the off-licence; the potential for boozer bellicosity or lonely domestic anti-climax. Sometimes, fifty people bellowing in triumph at a telly is the last thing in the world you want. Sometimes it’s perfect, but increasingly I feel such perfection dwells only in the knockout stages. The joy of a tournament is letting the excitement build, after all.