Oh dear. So Holland lost.

7pm, World Cup Final day, your nation is involved, the weather is oppressively hot, it's a Sunday.

Geldrop, our base for the next seven days, was like a ghost town. Just the odd bar open here or there. Few fans congregating.

One bar did have a paddling pool ready - presumably for the soon-to-be-introduced Dutch ritual of dunking English referees.

Another bar had a promotion of selling beer for just One Euro. More of this please.

Embracing another nation's footballing culture is a strange concept. Our photographer Tim got into the mood, wearing a Dutch top. Just to fit in.

We know the result. The difference in the supporters was marked. The youngsters, drinking alcohol and smoking (and by youngsters I mean 15-year-olds at best), wanted a Netherlands win. No matter what.

The older guard did too. But a few times they winced at some of their nation's cynicism.

This was no Total Football. Near Neanderthal perhaps.

Obviously I didn't mention that last night.

We made new friends along the way, including a somewhat drunk darts player who claimed to have played against Phil Taylor recently. I suspect he lost.

Mind you we did well to get to Holland in the first place. Tim's satnav was excellent. In 2008.

Since then the region has new roads, none of which correlated with our satnav so we got to know the local A-roads and motorways quite well. A bit too well, if we're honest.

Parking wasn't a problem, but clearly the Dutch have a lack of confidence in their female drivers.

Our hotel boasts 'woman only' (sic) parking slots. They are nearer to the hotel for starters. And, for some reason, a lot wider than the other parking spots.

Holland, sexist? Who'd have thought it.

Not that it was of much use today - heavy rain brought a flood and the fire brigade to the car park.

Meanwhile, at the team hotel there was much amusement on World Cup final day when kit man Dave Matthews mentioned to press officer John Simpson 'there were a lot of Blackpool fans around'.

"Oh yeah..you're right," replied a surprised Simmo.

Meanwhile, Jonas Olsson and Steven Reid were on 'media' duty today. Both were relaxed and buoyant about the season - and the first victims of our occasional series entitled 'posing with quirky objects in the hotel foyer'. Olsson posing over a piano, Reid sat in the centre of a giant chess board.

Regrettably it wasn't Roman Bednar, otherwise I'd have got to use my hilarious Czech mate gag.

Instead I have to contend with a quip about Reid's glorious pawn collection.

Still, we should be grateful that Roman was here in the first place.

The striker was forced to do a walk of shame down to the front of the plane on the outward journey after a tannoy announcement came over telling the whole plane that he had dropped his passport...

Speaking of which, Albion's party was too big in numbers to be allocated first-class seats so the club were allocated normal seats. The kind you or I would have.

But KLM had three first-class seats up for grabs, which they decided to allocate randomly.

The lucky recipients?

Youngsters George Thorne, Marcus Haber and Sam Mantom.

The others, including Roberto Di Matteo and his coaching staff, had to stay in cattle class.

You couldn't make it up...