Mark Palmer - Lost in France: The Story of Englands 1998 World Cup Campaign

ENGLAND DROP DRINK-DRIVER ran the headline above a two-paragraph story on the front of the Daily Telegraph. Rio Ferdinand, the West Ham United footballer, was yesterday withdrawn from Englands squad to face Moldova next week after being convicted of drink-driving. Glen Hoddle made the decision because of sensitivity towards the offence following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a car driven by a man who had been drinking.

It was a sound move by Hoddle, even though he had been put under pressure by Keith Wiseman, the Chairman of the Football Association. The country was in an alien emotional state. The funeral was about to take place in London amid scenes never witnessed before in the United Kingdom. For nearly a week, people queued patiently to sign books of condolence in memory of someone they had never met but felt they knew as if she was a member of their own family. On day two there were five books of condolence at St Jamess Palace; by day four there were forty-three. Flowers piled up outside buildings and in parks. Priests, politicians, analysts and all manner of royal experts tried to make sense of it, but by the end of the week it was not always clear for whom people were grieving, or why. It was profoundly moving and it was deeply disturbing. The only certainty was that the country had surprised itself by the manner of its reaction.

I visited Kensington Gardens just after Dianas coffin had arrived from St Jamess Palace. The park was choked. There were businessmen carrying briefcases and mothers cradling babies; there were teenagers and pensioners, cynics and sentimentalists, the buttoned up and the washed out. There were Japanese students and American tourists. Every tree had been turned into a shrine and thousands of people were camped out along the funeral route to Westminster Abbey. Two billion people around the world would watch the procession on television.

Five days later, England were supposed to play a football match. An important football match. Losing would plunge the country into deeper despondency and ensure that for the second time in eight years the worlds biggest sporting extravaganza would take place without England.

Meanwhile, the Scottish FA was sinking into a quagmire by insisting that their equally crucial game against Belarus would go ahead as planned at 3 pm on Saturday 7 September in Aberdeen, a little over thirty minutes before Diana was to reach her final resting-place at Althorp. True, football matches had been played on the day of Winston Churchills state funeral, but this was a different matter altogether. Estonia failing to turn up twelve months previously for their game against Scotland had nothing on this. The Lord Provost of Aberdeen said that if Scotland was intent on playing she would stay away as guest of honour. Then Donald Dewar, the Scottish Secretary, made it clear that he was particularly concerned about the decision in the light of tragic events. Tony Blair disapproved as well. And then three senior players, Andy Goram, Gordon Durie and Ally McCoist, told their coach, Craig Brown, that they did not wish to be selected. Late on Wednesday, the Scottish FA ate humble haggis and moved the match to Sunday. Scotland 4 Belarus 1.

There was no such dilemma for the English FA, but 16 Lancaster Gate would have to tread carefully. The first David Davies, the FAs Director of Public Affairs, heard of Dianas death was at 5 am on the morning she died, when Sky Sports telephoned, wanting to know the FAs official position about that afternoons game between Liverpool and Newcastle going ahead as planned. And if the Liverpool game was cancelled then the only other scheduled League match, Crewe v. Port Vale, would also have to be stopped. Davies telephoned Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, at 8.30 am. He and Straw were friends from their respective university student days at Sheffield and Leeds. Wait and see was the agreed policy, but not for long. By 10 am, both games had been called off.

Rio Ferdinand was going to miss out on gaining his first cap and becoming, at eighteen, the youngest player to represent England since Duncan Edwards in 1955. Hoddle, already almost a year into the job, had been generous in offering players clemency for their untidy private lives. He had stuck by Paul Gascoigne after he admitted beating up his wife, and he had been prepared to give Ian Wright the benefit of the doubt on more than a couple of occasions. There were those who thought Hoddle was guilty of double standards, but the idea of allowing Ferdinand, a convicted drink-driver, to face the Royal Box and sing the National Anthem and then stand in silence to honour the Peoples Princess so recently killed by a man three times over the limit would have been an absolution too far.