Grays, it does seem ironic that some people would be more keen to fly over 3000 miles to get to Basildon than some of our domestic teams would travel 50 miles .... but as this thread has so clealy illustrated, we can moan all we like but in the end, we cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and if we ain't got the right type of people then we ain't got the right type of people, that's that!
The proud and competitive people within our midst, the ones who really do care about where we are in the scheme of things have just got to grin and suffer it because as someone suggested, 'why is it such a bad thing when people choose not to come to the Millenniums'?
And when we endeavor to answer that question, we begin to really understand what's important.
As some people might even suggest, this a cultural thing peculiar to us Brits and maybe I could handle that but how does that explain the position we held not so long ago where we ruled Europe and could contest with the Yanks.
If it were cultural then presumably that era would never have happened ....but it did ...we were the guv'nors in Europe and close to the Yanks.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel ....but let me tell ya something, it's a frikkin long tunnel and at the moment, it looks about one photon in diameter from here