Mike Rowbottom: All very childish - but that's the very point of the World Cup

The television was briefly filled with Mexico's coach, Javier Aguirre, in a tight blue shirt, gesturing urgently to his players following an Italian near-miss.

The image caught the attention of my younger daughter, who had previously appeared steadfastly indifferent to the charms of the Beautiful Game's most beautiful tournament.

"Look at his armpits," she said. "They're disgusting."

That's the thing about the World Cup. It's got something for everyone.

Just after noon today, for the fourth and please Jesus not the last time, the nation will come together in front of a screen with one expectation. As both terrestrial channels have been demonstrating with their roving cameras, hordes of citizens across the country will be rising, roaring and wincing in unison as the action from Japan unfolds.

It is a heady time to be an England supporter. I can remember as if it was 1986 – which it in fact was – watching Gary Lineker's hat-trick against Poland turn the men with three lions on their shirts into cool cats after a whimpering start to their Mexico World Cup campaign.

As every goal was scored, all inhabitants of the house in which I saw the match gave an impromptu impersonation of Spitfires out in the street before wheeling back in formation to the front room. All very childish. But the World Cup allows us to be childish. That's one of the main points about the World Cup.

And as the pictures from BBC and ITV have shown, it also allows children to be childish, which may not sound like much, but in a culture increasingly saturated with prompts to become premature teenagers, or premature tweenagers, that is no bad thing either.

As the final whistle blew on the 1-0 win over Argentina, my nine-year-old son and I invented a brief new dance in celebration. It won't catch on, but it was great while it lasted.

Due to circumstances within my control, I found myself watching the second half of the England-Nigeria game in my children's school hall, where the enlightened headmaster, like numerous others nationwide, had anticipated the moral dilemma facing so many parents – take them in late, or dump them early? – by providing a screening in the main hall.

Without the usual cues of commentary, the match seemed curiously alien as it played itself out. But when Sodje – a player whose name was richly celebrated by a number of boys on the bench nearest to me – produced his lumbering foul on Owen, sending the fresh-faced forward sprawling with two mighty arms, outraged boos rang out, and, as booing children looked around excitedly at other booing children, confirming that they were all booing together, someone decided to transfer the upsurge of energy into a chant of "England, England". That seemed a good bet for everyone to join in with, and so they did, branching out after a while into a variant I hadn't heard since I was their age – "two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? England."

Meanwhile, someone I know who was watching the match in Ronnie O'Sullivan's favourite snooker hall reported a different reaction. Throughout the match, one all-purpose phrase – 'F***ing hell!' – was widely employed in response to every twist of fortune. But although the words remained the same, the inflections were infinitely flexible. Such is the beauty of the Anglo-Saxon language.

As England entered the final quarter of their match the tension was proving troublesome for a couple of the back-bench boys. By the time I noticed the disturbance, the teacher who had been watching at my side was already moving smoothly into action to have a quiet word. The approach was Dixon of Dock Green rather than The Bill, but utterly effective. As in striking the ball, the secret is in the timing.

When the final whistle went the hall-full of children seemed at a momentary loss. There was no point any more in shouting for England, because the match was over, but England hadn't won, so...

A number of the boys were cavorting about with arms raised in the air. Those boys knew the score. But for many of the others the experience seemed perplexing, like watching Oxford and Cambridge share the Boat Race. All they knew was it was an extraordinary start to lessons, and All Very Exciting.

"Good luck with your day," I said to the watchful teacher, before walking back to my car, ears ringing as if I had come out of a school disco.

I did ask one girl what she had thought of the game. "Paul Scholes was the best," she replied, thoughtfully. "Owen and Beckham didn't play as well as they could. And Heskey was awful." Make that those boys and at least one girl knew the score.