By Clive Tyldesley
The Daily Telegraph Monday 17 November 1997

The Banqueting Hall at Wembley Stadium is the place to be seen at an England international match. In the corporate haven of buckshee, VIP football, entry to the Hall and a seat in the Royal Box area beyond is one of the hottest tickets in town.

There were not many names to drop from Saturday's visit to the inner sanctum after the Cameroon game, a low-key affair on and off the pitch. But I did speak to Alan Shearer.

The England captain currently spends most of his life answering the same question over and over again. Just as it is almost impossible to greet a pregnant woman without asking her how long she has to go, so there is a routine compulsion to quiz Shearer about his recovery from the serious ankle injury he suffered in July.

"I'm jogging now," he answers politely. Bamboo sticks under the fingernails would not persuade Shearer to tell you anything he does not want you to know, but what must be driving him round the bend is that he does not really know himself when he will be back in action.

Inactivity is one of the few things in life that do not sit comfortably with England's ambassadorial centre- forward. He was chewing the pre-match fat with his agent, Tony Stephens, and his host for the evening, Umbro's Martin Prothero. Both are valued friends and allies. But when Ian Wright, Jamie Redknapp and Steve Watson drifted into the Hall half an hour before kick-off, Shearer made a beeline for them. He has an honours degree in dressing room banter, and must surely be missing the fellowship of the football team almost as much as he is the buzz of playing and scoring.

Despite completing the journey to France without him, England are missing Shearer too. Just before the kick-off against Cameroon, Glenn Hoddle shook hands and exchanged a few brief words with his talismanic spearhead. You did not need to be a lip-reader to get the message.

Everything the national coach is doing with his attack at the moment is no more than a contingency plan against Shearer's failure to make his expected return in the spring. Hoddle has his mind set on fielding one out-and-out forward at the finals, and his heart set on fielding Shearer. All the inspiration that Wright provides, all the promise that Robbie Fowler exudes, all the varying claims of Andy Cole, Chris Sutton and Stan Collymore, Les Ferdinand, Emile Heskey and Michael Owen are but alternatives to Plan A.

The roles of the supporting forwards - Teddy Sheringham and/or Paul Scholes - have been cast, but Hoddle is having to rehearse without his leading man for now.

Hoddle is hoping that Shearer may actually return fresher and fitter for national service than if he had been leading the Newcastle attack all season. Hoddle has vivid memories of what Marco van Basten did to England and everybody else at the 1988 European Championship after a season of enforced rest and recuperation. Shearer himself was on the surgeon's slab shortly before Euro '96, remember.

For now, he sits in the £45 seats with the council members and the sponsors and the television executives. The FA's chief guest on Saturday, Gary Lineker, had to leave at half-time to go and prepare his script for Match of the Day. The rest of us sat down to chicken supreme at the post-match banquet, and watched Italy sweating over qualification in Naples.

But for a miss by an Italian forward, and the nerve of a Dutch referee in Rome last month, it could have been England in that play-off decider. The margins between international success and failure are tight. The timing of Alan Shearer's return could make all the difference.