England Expects

 

England’s win over Croatia on Sunday may have lit up hopes of football ‘coming home again and that has never tended to end well. Still, it was a winning start against the supposed main group rivals and with a familiar lineup of players from across the Premier League, they will continue to be the side that divides us most in terms of support or otherwise.

In terms of popularity on home shores, the game was a winner despite being played on a sunny Sunday afternoon. 11.6 million people tuned into the BBC’s coverage representing a 79.2 per cent share of the available viewing audience.

 

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Paddy Power’s  Waterloo

 

Another good point from the Raheem Sterling goal was the first sum of €10,000 being guaranteed for the Irish domestic game by Paddy Power.

The bookmaker is donating that sum for every goal that England score and teams across Ireland will be able to put themselves forward for a share.

Dublin City may only be slowly recovering to its levels of footfall but those who have been going in via Ballsbridge will have noticed that there is a rather large banner over the Waterloo pub saying as much.

 

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Marshall Meme

 

Meme culture is one that you can rarely predict with any great certainty but Scotland goalkeeper David Marshall would be advised to look the other way after the Czech Republic’s second goal rather caught him out of position.

Balls.ie had a good round-up of the best of the memes.

 

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Plugging into Brussells at Wembley 

 

Those journalists who have made it to stadia to file reports are a lot fewer than normal and some have had to face an unusual plugin problem. UEFA have a universal approach to taking over the stadia which makes perfect sense.

One of the things they have done in the press rooms is installed power units for journalists to plug in computers charge their phones and whatever else is needed. The universal approach though means that at Wembley and Hampden Park over the past two days the plugs are the same as we would see on holidays and work trips across Europe being two pins as opposed to our three.

How that will have gone down amongst any Brexit supporting media has not been reported but at least there was an adaptor in the goodie bags which they all received.

 

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Today’s action from EURO2020 on RTÉ Sport

 

Hungary Vs Portugal– Tuesday 15 June at 4.30 pm on RTÉ2

Jacqui Hurley is joined by Kevin Doyle and Stephanie Roche for live coverage of Hungary v Portugal from Budapest in Group F. Commentary from Ger Canning. Kick-off 5.00 pm.

France Vs Germany – Tuesday 15 June at 7.30 pm on RTÉ2

Darragh Maloney is joined by Didi Hamann and Richie Sadlier for live coverage of France v Germany in Group F from Munich. Commentary from George Hamilton and Ronnie Whelan. Kick-off 8.00 pm

Highlights – Tuesday 15 June at 11.10 pm on RTÉ2

Highlights of all the day’s Euro 2020 action.

 

UEFA, Heineken, Paddy Power, Balls.ie and RTÉ Sport are among the 250+ members of the Sport for Business network of sporting and business organisations working together across a number of key areas.

 

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