OK – forget the farce in the England camp over the last few days, I’m willing to give them one last show of blind devotion before changing my nationality completely and becoming Singaporean.

Call me gullible, but come 3pm this afternoon I’m going to buy John Terry’s hastily arranged apology-cum-statement that claims everything is fine on planet Rustenburg.

I’ll even buy Fabio Capello’s assertions that he’s actually happy – despite every facial expression he has exhibited in the tournament so far telling me otherwise.

For 90 minutes, I’ll be the flag-waving, face-painting, Rooney-bellowing supporter I was way back when we started our journey against the US some 11 days ago.

It seems a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then but let’s not look past the fact that if we beat Slovenia, we’re through, and we can put all the petty squabbles aside for some serious knockout football.

There has been a rumour flying round that Capello will drop Rooney in Port Elizabeth – and I can only hope that it has emanated from the ‘hilarious’ live James Corden show that blights my television set every time I have to watch a game on ITV and lose the remote control.

He phoned the Slovenian’s hotel the other day and convinced the receptionist that the kick-off time had been changed.

Side-splitting stuff!

Rooney should be itching to do damage, whatever the formation, and whether or not Joe Cole is playing.

In fact, there should be 11 Englishmen desperate to prove a point in Port Elizabeth, if only to cynical hacks like myself.

Last night, and despite my favourite commentary pair Steve Wilson and Mick McCarthy covering the Argentina game, I spent the majority of my time in the backwaters of BBC3 watching Chung-Yong Lee take on Danny Shittu.

Chungy impressed again as the Taeguk Warriors won through to the knockout stages but the Koreans rode their luck a bit.

Shittu has had a decent tournament too, but Nigeria, like Cameroon, South Africa and the Ivory Coast have shown that they still fail to gel on the big stage.

Great individuals, poor collective effort – I just hope I’m not writing something similar after the game today.

Fingers crossed.