IT'S taken over, hasn't it? Earwig-O, earwig-O, earwig-O! Wall to wall football.

I came out of church after the annual service for the Master Mariners Company last Friday lunchtime and tried to get a taxi to take me to their ship, HQS Wellington, for lunch. Not a moving cab in sight. All parked up while the cabbies had slipped into the pubs to watch the England-Argentina game on the big screens.

So, nothing for it but shanks' pony. Off I trundled the mile and a half along the Embankment. When I got to the ship, all the liverymen and their ladies were glued to their portable radios, listening to the commentary. Then when it came to sitting down for the excellent lunch, the Master of the Mariners kept telling us the score. The first words of his election speech were: "I'm glad to be able to tell you that England have won!"

Saturday morning newspapers were full of it. There were more pages of reports and comments about the match than there had ever been about the Falklands War. Even the so-called "quality" broadsheets displayed banner headlines on their front pages and followed up with acres of coverage inside. It's at times like these that I wonder what's happened to the rest of world news. More slaughter on the West Bank? Forget it. There was a stride-by-stride account of Beckham's penalty kick. India and Pakistan about to start a nuclear war? Don't bother me with such trivia! Tell me more about Seaman's point-blank, match-saving save.

Football dominates the whole of society at the moment. You can't walk down the street without hearing people offering their resums of matches past and their predictions for the games to come. I expect any day now to hear commentaries over the airwaves from the leaders of our great institutions. Imagine the Archbishop of Canterbury: "The cross was all-important and decisive. Argentina erred and strayed and, sure enough, they paid the penalty. I think I can say - in a very real sense - that the whole team ran the race and kept the faith to give us the ultimate victory."

Or what might the Regius Professor of Metaphysics at Oxford University say? "I perceived the sense datum of Beckham's foot connect with the sense datum of what in ordinary English is, I believe, called 'the ball' - although of course these matters are not to be supposed to exist in themselves but they are, as Immanuel Kant reminds us, synthetic a priori constructions by our mental equipment and perceptive abilities."

Even Tony Blair might give us his views: "Well, look. No, I'm not here just to talk about the result. That's not what New Labour is all about. Of course not. I want people to understand the modern image of the game, how football has been modernised under my Government."

Finally, in jubilee week: "My husband and I were delighted to see such a heart-warming vision of happy faces throughout this country of ours..."

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.