Euro 2016: Just when I thought I’d banished my England nightmare, we disgrace ourselves at the hands of Iceland
Bryan Robson reckons Three Lions' shock exit to minnows will live long in the memory as Roy Hodgson quits post on the spot
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I THOUGHT my Norway nightmare had finally gone away.
Sadly, pathetically, I lived through it all again last night.
The memories of the worst moment of my international career had very much faded as I sat down to watch what I believed would be a fairly simply exercise against Iceland in Nice.
How wrong could I be? How wrong could all of those England fans in the Allianz Riviera be?
And those watching, horror-struck, on the telly.
My own nightmare was the 2-1 defeat by Norway in Oslo’s Ulleval Stadium back on September 9, 1981.
Yes, I remember that black date. It is almost 35 years ago now but it still hurts to this day.
What made last night worse was that it was almost like a perfect – a perfectly terrible – re-run.
I won my 13th cap against Norway, scored the opener, my first ever international goal, and we were ahead and seemingly in cruise control.
But by half-time we were behind and we never came back.
Sucker-punched by no-hopers, a side that would have struggled to play for an old Third Division club.
I remember later hearing that the Norwegian TV commentator was laughing at us, taunting Margaret Thatcher.
He was telling us: “You boys took one hell of a beating.”
If anything, this was worse and I fear it might take years to recover from and this is an awful stain on our reputation.
I don’t care that Iceland had shown so much guts just to get to the finals - and to be in the last 16.
They had not come up against a side with our supposed pedigree or potential and if this was not going to be a walk in the park it was anything like mission impossible.
In fact, if any Englishman had suggested that we might not get through they would have been laughed out of town.
Except we shoot ourselves in the foot more often than any so-called major football nation.
And after this debacle, I am not sure we can call ourselves that any more.
Not after we showed that for all our so-called talent, for all the domination we showed in the group games in France, we were only flattering to deceive.
Yes, we have a lot of promising young players.
Delle Alli is a talent. So is Eric Dier. Harry Kane is a top striker.
Throw in Daniel Sturridge and Raheem Sterling.
Jamie Vardy is a flier.
But when push came to shove last night they did not deliver.
Not like they do when they are playing in the Premier League.
Rooney, I believed, had found his ideal platform playing deeper - but for all his experience, he found himself swept up in the panic of it all.
The concern going into the finals, of course, was that we lacked a solid defensive central pairing in Chris Smalling and Gary Cahill.
That Joe Hart, for all his tub-thumping, had become suspect.
But until last night we were still standing and looking to go forward.
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This was the game that was supposed to pull it all together.
Instead it all fell apart.
I have been a staunch supporter of Roy Hodgson.
I even believed, before this game, that providing we did not lose in bad way, he should remain in his job for the World Cup campaign.
But I would not have been able to stand by him. Not after this abject humiliation.
Now he has resigned and the question every English football fan – far less the FA – will be asking is: Where do we go from here?
The answer is nowhere.
Not when, under pressure, our players bottle it when the chips are down.
The late goal against Russia undermined us. It was desperation stakes against Wales. Frustration against Slovakia.
And then, last night, mistake, after mistake, after mistake.
I called for England to show the right stuff in France.
The guts, courage and resolve our teams have failed to show for years.
We did not respond. All we produced was a French farce.
And we should hang our heads in shame. I certainly do.
Again.
