It was a last-minute decision to rush off yesterday evening with my 12-year-old son Ari to catch the Israel-Russia match at Ramat Gan Stadium. For my boy, this was a splendid chance to catch his first-ever view of the Israeli national team, despite the fact that they had already squandered their hopes of getting to Euro 2008 thanks to a home defeat against Croatia and a humiliating loss at Wembley.

What stirred my impulse to steal out of the house while my wife was resting, and take to the highway from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv was the rumour that 1,000 England fans were making the journey from the UK to cheer Israel on.

Well, you don’t have to be James Bond to want to join in such a mission. After all, blood is thicker than water, and having been born and bred in Manchester, the call of Queen and country could not be ignored.  Any last-minute jitters were calmed by the badly-coded headline in the local mass daily that proclaimed that the Israel football team was “On Her Majesty’s Service.”

'My English heart missed a bit when the Russians hit the post late in the game, but from that moment on, the feeling was that the mission would be successfully completed'


An Aston Martin DB9 would have negotiated the hilly terrain towards the dark Mediterranean coast far better than my Subaru Impreza, but as the car spluttered and swerved around the corners, my focus was on the result not the means.

We arrived at the stadium expecting to have to negotiate our entry at highly inflated prices via the ticket touts.  Our luck, however, held out as the ticket office was still open. We managed to buy tickets at face value, for the local equivalent of  £15; I must not forget to claim back from Miss Moneypenny.

With over an hour and a half left before the game, we decided to scout out the territory around the ground, in the hope of connecting with other England fans. Unfortunately the red cross of St. George was nowhere to be seen. To our surprise all we could see were thousands of Russian agents dressed in red, white and blue. If this mission was to succeed it would have to be against all the odds, as the English forces were heavily outnumbered to say the least.