In a previous role at the college, I worked one-to-one with students on their study skills. Since the students finished their courses in mid-June, I then had a long stretch to the college closing date with not a great deal to do. I once went to see my line manager to ask what she thought I should be doing at this time of year, only to find she had already gone on leave - so I surmised that I was not indispensable at the end of the summer.

Despite this, my team were still expected to be in work, if not actually working. This was inconvenient precisely once every two years, when there was either a World Cup or a European Championships. Myself and my best work buddy are big football fans, and the prospect of missing Algeria vs Lithuania was sometimes just too much for us to take, so the planning would begin on the Great Football Scam.

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I had become practised at ducking out of my responsibilities for sporting purposes during my PGCE year, which clashed with the Ashes. I managed to convince the tutor that the scintillating lecture on the national English framework really needed the addition of breakout sessions where we could reflect on the content outside of the classroom. And so we were given licence to go to the canteen for small group discussions - where the TV was on and England had just come in to bat. The English victory over Australia in 2005 was made all the sweeter by the fact that we were stealing students’ futures by missing out on learning how to teach them to read.

Football you don’t want to miss

Fast forward to 2010 and the FIFA World Cup is being held in South Africa, with some of the matches being played at lunchtimes. This was a particularly easy scam to pull - first of all me and my friend Phil would go to the pub for the 12.30pm kick-off. At around the 40-minute mark, we would text our line manager and say that we were going to the pub for lunch to watch the second half and would he like to join us? We would then brief the barman that under no circumstances was he to let on that we had been there the whole time. For New Zealand vs Slovakia, our manager requested we watch the first half over lunch instead as he had a meeting. So at half-time we all left together, myself and Phil walking towards our building, and stopping into a different pub for the second half. It was the perfect crime.

Things were made slightly more difficult during the 2016 Euros, when England were due to play Wales at 3pm on a Friday. We now also had different line managers and worked at different buildings. We were told we could leave at 4pm to catch “most” of the second half as a treat. This was obviously not good enough so we pulled the old sleepover switcheroo that has been working on parents for decades. I told my manager I had a meeting with Phil at his building, and he told his that he was meeting me at my building. We rendezvoused at a bar that was just far enough out of town to get away with it, and pulled off the mission beautifully.

The next World Cup, Covid-19 permitting, is in Qatar, with 10am kick-offs, in November 2022. I am already putting the groundwork in to build my scheme of work around the many cultural lessons that can be learned from Mali vs Turkmenistan.

Kirsty Walker teaches at a college in the North West of England. She tweets @Kirstsclass