AND to think we had stayed on an extra 24 hours in Poland for… THIS.
Our loyalty to the cause — and that of the 600 fans from Blighty over to our left who had survived the previous night’s retractable roof fiasco — was rewarded with the worst England performance so far under Roy Hodgson.
And yet there is something even scarier than that: if we perform like this on dangerous away trips to Montenegro and Ukraine we could find ourselves in the position where our qualification for Brazil 2014 is under serious threat.
The usual dimwitted flag-wavers will say we are top of the group with two wins and two draws from four games.
That we are a shoo-in for Brazil. That there ain’t no stoppin’ us now. Don’t kid yourselves. We’re not even in charge of the group.
Come November 14, we won’t be top of it, either. Montenegro are at home to San Marino that night and, by the time they have finished with the butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers, they will be two points clear of England having played the same number of matches.
Should Poland also win their game in hand they will draw level with England.
Apart from San Marino and Moldova, where are Hodgson’s team going to get the wins they need to take them to the World Cup?
They couldn’t beat the rapidly-improving Montenegrins in the Euro 2012 qualifiers and would you really put money on them to win in Ukraine?
And Poland should have beaten them last night. So not quite so nailed on, is it?
Some dullards are going to say Hodgson still remains “unbeaten” after 11 games.
That, though, is one of life’s more meaningless statements.
The only reason England are “unbeaten” — despite losing to Italy on penalties at Euro 2012 — is that, the Italians aside, they haven’t played anyone.
Sure, France and Sweden were OK but hardly comparable to some of the really serious teams of the past.
What you cannot argue with, though, is the belief this was a good point away from home.
In fact, it was a bloody marvellous point, a miraculous one even, away from home considering just how bad England were.
It was as wretched an England performance as we have seen in a number of years — taking us back to the Dark Ages of Steve McClaren.
It also made a total and utter nonsense of Hodgson’s claim this week that every time England meet up under him they grow more stronger and confident.
Why does he say this when the evidence is so patently to the contrary? Who is he trying to kid? Himself? He knows, we know, the whole bloody world knows that the one thing England have to improve on if they want to stand any chance whatsoever of continuing to make it to the quarter-final stage of major tournaments is ball retention.
On what we saw in the National Stadium yesterday we are as far away from becoming a team that can keep the ball as we have ever been.
It really was shocking to watch the excruciating manner in which Wayne Rooney and Michael Carrick gave the ball away.
It is almost impossible to believe a player of Rooney’s seeming quality can actually be as bad in this department as he was here.
Carrick, if anything, was worse, making a mockery of the belief in some quarters of the England camp that he could become England’s Andrea Pirlo.
We are probably now not far off the day when Carrick will once again make himself unavailable for selection if he is not as good as guaranteed selection.
And then there is Tom Cleverley.
I said some time ago the jury is out on this young man’s England future despite the rave reviews he received after the 5-0 destruction of Moldova. They were not only untimely given just how poor Moldova were but all rather absurd.
Against Poland yesterday, he looked worryingly out of place. Yes, he was asked to play wide left which is hardly his position of choice, sacrificed to the manager’s gameplan.
But the Manchester United player was still some way off the pace required at international level.
How he survived until the end is anyone’s guess — well, apart from the fact every England manager has a blind spot or two and Cleverley could well be Hodgson’s.
There were wide players on the bench queuing up to have a go — Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Aaron Lennon and Adam Johnson among them.
When Oxlade-Chamberlain did eventually get on he caused all sorts of problems down the right flank. It just begged the question why Hodgson didn’t start him?
Many England supporters reckon they know the answer — that this England team is becoming a reflection of the manager in charge of it. Boring, safe and a little difficult to beat. And then there are the 99 per cent of England fans who would start Oxlade-Chamberlain every game.
So a point it was with England taking an extremely fortunate first-half lead from the only avenue through which they threatened — a set-piece.
Even then Rooney’s header from Steven Gerrard’s corner required a deflection off Lukasz Piszczek to find the back of the net — it was, incredibly, England’s only effort on target all game.
Yet Poland, despite missing their skipper and best player Jakub ‘Kuba’ Blaszczykowski, deservedly drew level when Joe Hart failed to cut out a corner and Kamil Glik headed home with 19 minutes left.
This should have been the signal for a grandstand finish from the hosts. It never came, though.
So England made it 15 games without defeat against the Poles.
That aside, there was precious little else to celebrate.
By STEVEN HOWARD
