IT must be something to do with that Hadron Collider thingy.

You know, those scientific games they are playing out in Geneva to try to find out what caused the Big Bang.

Of course, if it all goes wrong, it could create a black hole into which the Earth will disappear.

On Wednesday morning, we warned of interfering with the natural order and how, if we did, strange events would occur.

Something over which we mere mortals would have no control.

And look what happened in Zagreb on Wednesday night.

England suddenly started playing a very weird and wonderful game. I think it is called football.

In the past, it had been something only foreigners were any good at.

But there we were, moving the ball around from end to end with a style that, at times, bordered on sophistication.

And at the centre of it all was a young teenager who, surely, must have been a gift from the gods. Or a visitor from outer space.

Because it was all very alien.

Wizened old hacks like me sat on the bus back to the media hotel worrying they had spent the last few hours hallucinating.

And that we would wake up to discover it was only a dream.

But when we did wake up, it had not been. There was the scoreline in the papers — Croatia 1 England 4.

And, yes, England players HAD come through the mixed zone with a confident air about them, a smile on their faces, eager to talk. No heads down and mobiles clamped to ears in an attempt to escape yet another inquest.

Yes, England fans HAD come out of the ground shouting and singing, happy as can be, chanting the names of their heroes.

Naturally, they did look a bit stunned. In fact, some wore the disorientated look of men being guided back to sanitorium day rooms by nurses whispering in their ear ‘Don’t worry, love, it will be all right in a minute’.

But not half as shocked as some of us.

How were we going to cope in this new world?

Criticism of successive England teams had become so matter of fact, so pre-ordained, most of us had forgotten how to use words like ‘impressive’, ‘in control’ and ‘well organised’.

Or phrases like ‘Rooney was inspirational’, ‘the defence was rock solid’ and ‘the ball made its way unerringly to a team-mate’.

Plus ‘the manager was totally in command of the situation’.

Worrying times.

So what straw can we grasp to reassure ourselves that things will return to normal? That, once again, soon, we will be losing to teams like Northern Ireland and scrambling goalless draws at home to Macedonia?

Well, we can cheer ourselves with the memory of Munich and how, after we had thrashed the Jerries 5-1, they got to the 2002 World Cup final and we went out in the quarters.

We can comfort ourselves in that Fabio Capello will still be haunted about how he finds room for Steven Gerrard. As he surely will, though Wednesday night was further proof you can play either Gerrard or Frank Lampard but certainly not both. Will he have to dump Joe Cole and squeeze Gerrard in on the left, much to the annoyance once more of the Liverpool skipper?

What does he do with Michael Owen? Wherefore Owen Hargreaves?

Will he have to make the fateful decision to drop David Beckham from the squad — as he did at Real Madrid — and go down as the man who finally did for old Golden Knackers?

Will he, in fact, have to go into hiding to avoid Posh tracking him down and turning him into a frozen pillar with one blast from a can of nuclear-strength hairspray?

Has he shown up Arsene Wenger as an old stick-in-the-mud for not bringing Theo Walcott through earlier?

And how will England fans cope at Wembley? How will they endure 90 minutes without the customary boos, jeers and hurling of rotten vegetables?

How will they cope with having to adopt a totally different attitude to our other national sport — drinking?

With finding that, rather than drowning their sorrows, they will be raising a glass or two for the strange business of TOASTING JT and Co?

Worrying times, indeed.

As for us hacks, we are finished. It is too late to teach old dogs new tricks. We are being sucked into the black hole already.

Well, at least something good might have come out of it.