Now the U21s have been knocked out of their tournament – not the first time the team has been eliminated in the group stage either – there’s a bit of a void between now and the next game for the senior team, which is a game against the Netherlands on 10th August.

So now the football season is officially ‘over’ (well, apart from the Copa America but we can’t get knocked out of that) for those of us that follow horse racing, there’s still plenty of action to get involved in over the ‘summer’ (although it’s absolutely pouring down outside the 11 Lions HQ right now) and on Saturday afternoon there are six meetings in the UK that include a couple of cracking looking races – the John Smith’s Northumberland Plate at Newcastle, which is followed by the John Sunley Memorial Criterion Stakes on the July course at Newbury.

Let’s say you fancied Overturn to win the first race and The Cheka to win the second, but you were also convinced that The Rectifier was going to win the 2.55 at Windsor and Chilled would come first in the 3:45 at Chester. You could place four separate win or each way bets but it’d be far more profitable to place a Lucky 15 which is a type of bet where even minimal stakes could return a tidy profit if your four selections came in – it’s basically 15 bets (four singles, six doubles, four trebles and a fourfold) but if only one of your fancies comes in you’re paid at double the odds.

So although there’s no domestic football to get involved with for the next few weeks, if you were lucky enough at the races to build up a nice pot that you could blow on Swansea winning the Premier League at 10,000-1. Don’t laugh though…I’m old enough to remember when they finished in the top six in the old First Division!