From a green and pleasant land.

Now that it's all over, we can announce the winners of the EuroHooligan competition.

After an uncharacteristically slow start to Euro 2004 in Portugal with only a solitary riot in the Algarve resort of Albufeira to show for their efforts, the England football hooligan team finally hit top form at the weekend and showed the kind of class expected from them as the favourites to win the 2004 fighting and pillaging competition.

Following the England team’s exit from the footballing tournament at the quarter final stage, losing on penalties to hosts Portugal, the hooligan majority back home swung into action to show the world yet again that when it comes to losing, nobody does it more disgracefully than Ingerlund.

As “fans” up and down the country came to grips with the reality that it really was all over for Svens boys, thousands of supporters targeted anyone of Portuguese origin or anyone who might possibly have drunk Mateus Rose in the past.

In Jersey, 1500 marauding fans ran amok through the capital St Helier (which has a large Portuguese population) throwing bottles and missiles at anyone with a non-English accent.

Police officers in full riot gear battled manfully to hold the mob back as they headed for the island’s Portuguese Club.

Two hours of mindless violence ensued.

A Portuguese restaurant owner was approached on the pavement outside her restaurant and was told by a group of thugs, “You had better go inside or else you might be a dead woman”.

Nice of them to give fair warning. Who says the English sense of fair play is dead?

In Norfolk, terrified Portuguese fans were trapped for two hours inside a Portuguese owned pub as a baying mob gathered outside, smashing the pub windows and setting fire to parked cars.

As he picked over the debris of his shattered premises, pub owner Heraldo Vargas said (somewhat naively we thought) “This is not what I thought English people were like.”

Where has he been for the last 20 years? Didn’t he see Italia 90, Euro 96, France 98 and Euro 2000? Obviously not.

In Croydon, Riot Police clashed with a gang of over 100 England supporters as they terrorised the streets.

In Boston, Lincolnshire, another crowd of 100 or so attacked a Kebab shop (a Kebab shop?!!?)

In Hertfordshire there were further ugly scenes of mayhem and violence with 17 arrests being made.

In Liverpool, a man had his ear cut off in a fight. But then in fairness, that kind of thing isn’t unusual on Merseyside.

Most sickening of all, in Banbury, Oxfordshire, police were investigating the death of a 29 year old man in a pub after the match.

Football - only a game?

In the minds of the mindless, apparently not.