Mr Beckham does his 75 minutes exactly

Last week we went with Ian and Steve to a football match at the Commonwealth Stadium. LA Galaxy were playing the Vancouver Whitecaps at an exhibition match. The big hype was that David Beckham was playing for LA Galaxy and because of that (or despite of it) 39,000 people turned up.

The crowd banter/abuse of an english match was missing. In the first half there was polite clapping, interspersed with two drunk Canadian lads loudly singing the praises of Man United (I think they'd turned up at the wrong match) but by the second half the crowd had mastered the art of the mexican wave and so things improved a bit.

The football itself wasn't all that, and I have to say that LA Galaxy were pretty poor despite having Mr Beckham, and Ruud Gullit (without the dreadlocks) as coach, and they lost 1-2. David Beckham was contracted to play at least 75 minutes, and was substituted at 75:01. He could have shown willing and stayed on for a few more seconds.

I realise the above all sounds very negative, but it was actually a fun evening out. In this desert of ice hockey, baseball and Canadian 'football', it provided some sustenance to the followers of the real thing. I quite enjoyed it too, and even spotted when one of the players was off side. Richard was quite proud of me.


As you can see clearly, David Beckham is no. 23, the left most one in blue.






Richard, Steve and Ian and a few thousand other people