National dilemma

Tonight England play the Ukraine and New Zealand play Bahrain. Both games are televised live on SKY in the middle of the night, our time (unlike in England itself, where the game is not going to be shown on television at all). They are on at the same time. The New Zealand one is repeated later on a different channel.

The match between the Oceania champions and the Arabic island nation that finished fifth in Asian World Cup qualifying is the first leg of a home and away playoff – the return leg is Westpac Stadium in Wellington on November 14 – with the winner progressing to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

England have eight wins from eight matches and they will top the group no matter what the result of their match. New Zealand need to win against Bahrain to go through to the World Cup. It will be the first time they have reached this stage since 1982. It’s a pretty big deal.

We watch our television through the SKY network which gives us a much clearer picture. We have a hard drive which can cope with recording eleventy billion hours of TV (I’m good with this technical stuff as you can tell). We bought it for the 2006 World Cup.

I’m spending tonight at a (SKY-less) friend’s house. Although I can set the recorder for one of the games, I can’t change channel so I won’t be able to record both of them. So the question is which do I record? Who do I want to watch more? Do I want to see my heroes – Gerrard; Crouch; Terry; Lampard; etc. – or do I want to see New Zealand try and make their sporting history with the likes of Ryan Nelson and Shane Smeltz, not to mention half of the Wellington Phoenix team for whom I have a sort of mocking affection?

Alistair Cooke once remarked the dichotomy about dual nationality was that “on a good day that you belong to two countries, and on a bad that you don't belong anywhere at all”. For me it boils down more to which football match to watch. Note I didn’t say which football team to support – there is no question there.