The young England team booked their place in the semi-finals of the European Under-21 Championship last night with goals from Reading's Leroy Lita and Blackburn striker Matt Derbyshire in a 2-0 win over Serbia in Nijmegen.
The match, though, was notable for a far more sinister reason, with much of it being played to a near-empty stadium as a result of the referee's reaction to booing and racist chanting which bore more than a passing resemblance to a day on the Big Brother set.
The focus of the racist baying and bullying, which was Grade 1 Offensive, was England's Nedum Onoehu, who is as black as the dead of night. The referee stood this for 25 minutes but, with Onoehu is tears, the official consulted the fourth official and subsequently evicted more than 28,000 of the capacity 32,000 fans from the ground.
The remainder sat through a dull affair with no racism or barracking of any kind, and little or no crowd violence to speak of.
England scored two goals, the Serbians, most of whom are gypsies, didn't score any, and that was that.
England's Trevor Huddlestone was also evicted late on for calling one of the Serbian team a 'gyppo'.
