By now you know the result: England 3 Israel 0. The consequences are myriad. Steve McClaren may feel more confident that he’s not going to be fired as manager next month; England supporters may feel that the team may yet qualify for the European championships next year; Michael Owen scored a beautiful goal, restoring faith that he is not yet finished; and Steve Gerrard played for sixty minutes without a painkilling jab in his big toe.

That last one is most important, because it was the best one for the player. And I daresay that the team doctors (my surgeon-daughter advises me) learned more about the healing of his big toe than they would have done if they had masked the pain. In fact, though you might think that seventy-one minutes was all Gerrard could give with a sore toe, it was not pain but cramp that caused him to be substituted. Because the toe had restricted the length and intensity of his training this last week, he couldn’t play full-pace for a whole game. And he will now be ready—unaided–for the next match on Wednesday, a tougher contest against Russia.

In an interview for the BBC, he was upbeat. “The toe is fine. All I had was a bit of cramp. I haven’t trained much for the last two or three weeks,” said Gerrard. “I will be a lot stronger on Wednesday for getting that 70 minutes in. The toe is healing well and that is behind me now. I didn’t need a painkiller.”

I was glad to hear that, for when I started watching professional soccer as a kid in the fifties, players were not treated very well by management. They had to play for a maximum wage, they could be transferred from club to club, whether they liked it or not, and some who wanted to move could be prevented from doing so by sheer nastiness, without any regard for the rights or unhappiness of the player.

Nowadays it is common for fans and pundits to complain about the amount of money players earn, about how they move from club to club for more money without thinking of the fans who come to see them. But in business, labor finds its own level of financial gain, whether the laborer be a soccer-player, an executive, an airline pilot or a plumber. They earn what they can, and sound contracts protect them from abuse, such as in the case of athletes, jabs before an important game.

Indiscriminate use of painkillers can damage a player and his future. So I for one am pleased Steve Gerrard played without a needle. I’d like to see them banned, just as other aids to performance are banned.