View balls please: England football fans at Wimbledon find attention wanders from the tennis

Phones and earpieces aplenty as football supporters find World Cup thriller against DR Congo hard to ignore

“Pssst!” The security staff at Wimbledon don’t do a lot of talking. The job of guarding Centre Court seems to be only a little less serious than standing sentry on Whitehall. But this guard, standing to attention outside the media centre in his blue peaked cap and freshly pressed jacket, has something to say to his colleague three feet away. “Pssst!” he whispers from out the side of his mouth. “Rashford’s starting.” His colleague shifted his eyes right while keeping his head straight ahead. “Rashford? Not Gordon?”

Wimbledon is about the one corner of England that isn’t showing the game. You’re not even in easy reach of a screen. The All England Club’s chief executive Sally Bolton said at the beginning of the week that they wouldn’t be showing football on any of the hundreds of TVs around the grounds, never mind the giant ones on the hill and in the South Village. She didn’t really need to explain it. Asking Wimbledon whether it will show the match has become a tradition of its own in years when there’s a football tournament on.

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