I am, however, still reflecting and wondering why anyone would ever want to be a goalkeeper.
My beloved and I go to a lot of football matches - almost every week during the football season. We always choose to sit or stand behind the goal, which means we spend a lot of time watching the man in front of the net. For the best part of ninety minutes, a goalkeeper is on his own, while his team-mates run around the field, playing without him. He can't join in. He can't astound and excite the fans with a hundred yard dribble then fire in a shot that threatens to burst through the net. There's no skilful passing, no holding up the ball in midfield, not even a chance of a sliding tackle. When you're a goalie, there's nothing you can do to help your team's progress. All you can do is keep warm, stay focused and keep your eye on the ball. All you can hope is that, at some point, you will be called on to make a heroic leap, a dramatic dive that will stop the ball and keep your team in the game.
And if, as happened to Rob Green last night, you slip or stumble, fluff or fumble - then you become not only an outsider to the ten men who are supposed to be your team-mates, you become an outcast to thousands.
We all make mistakes. I'm sure we all know that feeling of wishing we could turn the clock back, retrieve a situation. What most of us never have to endure is the humiliation of seeing our slip-ups filmed and photographed, played and replayed, again and again and again.
Last night's images of England's goalkeeper will stay with me for a long time - heartbreaking pictures of him down on all fours, desperately crawling back towards the goal, in the vain hope that he could snatch back the ball and his reputation.
There were eleven men in the England team, but only one of them is shouldering the blame for our faltering start to the World Cup. Sometimes, being a goalkeeper must be the loneliest job in the world.
