The Poolie Bunker

Anybody out there interested. Must be the quietest on record with no extra flags about or being asked if you want to join the wc sweepstake as there are still a few teams left. Mind you it suits me as i never watched a single minute live four years back and will not be changing this time around. Shove sweet caroline and football has never left home.

Lost a fiver drawing Switzerland in our works sweepstake ffs!!

It's nigh on impossible to whip up enthusiasm for the opening stages of a 48 team, 104 game World Cup. FIFA have made it so easy to qualify even the Jocks are there!

There'll be some interest by the time it gets to the later stages - in July

Those ‘in charge’ have managed to introduce boredom into their grand spectacle…well they have for me anyway.
Underwhelmed by the circus coming into town.

I'm looking forward to it, although I will miss some games due to the time difference, I'm not staying up until 3am to watch teams I have no interest in & who due to the tournament being expanded to 48 teams shouldn't be there anyway.

It will get better once the knockout stages start.

I will be watching the match against New Zealand on ITVX when I get up in the morning . Using a vpn . I will watch most of the games the next day on iPlayer or ITVX . England games might get up in the middle of the night but that novelty might soon wear off if we are playing shit

We should win it.
Cant wait.
Luv me Country still even though we all know what's going on.

In the office facilities came round to put up flags of all the competing countries. Me and another English bloke just sat laughing as not a single England flag was produced. There were, however, loads of Pride flags intermingled with the other flags. About 3 days later a single England flag appeared.

I work in Scotland

Oh, and I get an extra day off to rest my aching ribs after Scotland lose to Haiti 2nd Xi

just imagine the scenes if we did win it. The country full of st.georges flags and one carried proudly by the likes of sad sick khant , starmer and raynor showing her white with the red cross knickers. be great to see there two faces joining the two tiers.

I got South Africa.
Only lost £2 though

Drinks offer in Morrisons :
24 cans of Fosters £9.97.

Cheaper than that Singh Beer in Thailand

i,ll show interest the day they give me £9.97 to take 24 cans of fosters off there hands. one good thing about crap like that it stopped me drinking.

Not going to bother, rather watch a World Cup of old, perhaps 1970.
Much more entertaining than the crap we would have to endure in 2026!

A replay of the 66 final was on tv yesterday and v good.

No player misbehaviour and no VAR. Just end to end football played out in a respectful way.

This World Cup has left me cold, too many teams - FIFA have spoilt it with their greed.

and back in those days the only diving you saw was at the swimming baths and if you got a knock the crowd new it and did not nee informing by rolling around for what seems an eternity.

Africa B team? Ah you mean England. France is the A team.

Now that woke puppet, Southgate has gone, I have slightly more interest in the fortunes of England so I will be watching their games though I dont expect us to win it. I will particularly enjoy the highlights of any Scotland defeat. I just love to see all those wilting kilts, bagpipes and ginger beards. Happy days.

I also take great pleasure in seeing the sweaties take a good beating- regardless of who they're playing. Nothing like reciprocating disdain!

Back in the day, I used to cheer them on, but nowadays since a sizeable proportion are infected by the independence virus are openly hostile to anything English I just say f@&k em.

In Euro 96 I was up in Scotland on a walking holiday. In the pubs in Fort William every time England played utter hatred spilt out and when Southgate missed his penalty they celebrated.

I was quite shocked, and now I too think “FUCKEM”

think holland beat england around that time and they sold out of holland shirts in glasgow after the game. taking the piss and being happy for a team to lose isone thing but spending money on top to gloat must be a sign of madness to a jock.

So called elite level football is just so boring to watch with retaining possession being the priority for most teams, together with the interruptions while VAR scrutinise things to the nth degree (and often still get it wrong).. Most of the group games will not even be competitive given the increased number of teams that have qualified. Watching on TV is shite due to the lack of quality or knowledge of the so called pundits mostly employed to fill woke quotas.
Caps are 10 a penny and modern day records are absolutely bollocks compared to the exploits of the teams that only played a handful of games a year without international breaks and fielding 2 completely different 11s in a match.
For a long long time now football as a sport has been sacrificed in the name of cold hard cash.
Thankfully most of the matches will be after my bedtime so I won't even be tempted.

one good thing to come out of this lack of interest is there will be less self styled experts about who never go to a match who like to spout information they have got off the tele to anyone stupid enough to listen. we have had false number 9,s, players called a 10 but have 19 on their backs and any other description of a player the pundits can think of. a simple game for the working man stolen by millionaires and television.

At Euro 96 we beat Scotland, THEN hammered Holland, some great goals too! They whinging Scots may have bought Holland kits but it didn’t do them any good.

It's the same in Wales and Ireland. They at least have an excuse as it was the English who snuffed out their independence.

The Scots forget that we adopted their king (James VI of Scotland a.k.a. James I of England) and that Edinburgh was built on the profits of Empire just as much as London. And Braveheart's a load of Hollywood pish.

FIFA are looking to expand the competition to 64 teams in 2030. At this rate the Isle of Wight better get ready.

I gather FC Hartlepool are very interested. They seem to be implying that if West Auckland can do it, why cant they?

The States are certainly not going out of their way to endear the football world banning fans from certain countries, coming staff and now the referee from Somalia has been refused entry.

If they don't meet the entry criteria for the States then they right in not allowing them in aren't they?

I agree but prior to travel he and the others must have applied for and been granted visas, I am not sure its the U.K. where even though you have a visa it can be at the discretion of immigration officer at passport control.

Also, Mr Accy, back in the day we used to play with round balls, now an awful lot of players seem to play square balls.
Plus, everyone who played had two feet, one left and one right. A lot now seem to have a front foot and a back foot ??

and players who could use both feet nearly as good as each other were the norm and not some freak of nature they are made out to be. then just taking a corner kick with a ball thats stationary accuratly for 30 yards is seen as a feat of real skill and doing that every one might get you a contract somewhere.

Just drew England in the sweep round our way….we always do it, Grand National too.
Our lass once asked why we didn’t have one for the Cup Final……as only two tickets would be available, the penny eventually dropped.

Just watched The Overlap, some negative comments coming out about player selection and their chances of winning the World Cup.

Who needs time travel when you can read The Bunker? Jumpers for goalposts. Marvellous

The old man got me a proper leather football with Pools players autographs written on it for my birthday when I was 10…over the moon…for two days…..the old girl had been in a huff with me dad and as I sat clutching my status symbol on the couch, she then said in passing…’ how come your autographs are in the same handwriting…?

How many arguments did that cause using jumpers, no it was passed the ‘post or over the bar’ the biggest lads always won the argument, no VAR required.

goal technology was called the biggest or toughest lad.

Good warm up win last night.
Let's back our Country to win it.
And we will.

In a normal climate they might do but in the humidity they won’t, looking at some of the photos some already have had too much sun. I live in a hot and humid country and it drains you just walking around. Spending a couple of weeks there won’t get you acclimatised to the weather.

I can see the English n Scottish fans being United in what they think of Starmer.


Live TV a great opportunity to show the rest of the world that he's a Lieing Failure.

Watching some TV clips from The States, the Americans are asking fans what you here for, holidays, they appear to be unaware the World Cup is taking place.

I showed my geographic ignorance by having to look up where Curacao and Cape Verde are, ones off the coast of Venezuela and the other off the coast of East Africa near Senegal, I bet I'm not alone in that?

Watched the second half of the Canada game yesterday and was pleasently surprised how entertaining it was compared to the turgid possession football served up by our lot. Canada may not rank highly but it was good to see them give it a really good go and they thoroughly deserved the equaliser.

Watched the second half of the Scotland game, Scotland on the back foot but ground out a result against a team 40 places below them in the rankings. Sky news presenter was interviewing the fans as they left the ground, he assumed wrongly fans wearing Scotland tops were Scottish, nope only one from 6 was and you required a translator to understand what he was saying albeit he was very negative about the Scotland performance, dear me you can’t please some people.

sounds like feather ball is popular in scotland then.

Disappointed to wake up, to discover that the sweaties won. It would be, a deflected goal too!
FFS - They're going to be insufferable - Even more reason for me to avoid (Mc) Corby in the coming weeks.
The're Ketrin's, equivalent of Peterlee - only full of sweaties

Damn,they're top of their group as well.Rod Stewart will be well chuffed.

Plastic Jocks whose forefathers agreed with Doctor Johnson's advice: 'The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!'
They'd vote for the SNP if it was on the Corby polling card