HURRY UP AND QUALIFY AGAIN

The most galling thing about Scotland not qualifying for major tournaments is that we have to put up with the same nonsense every 2 years about Scotland supporting England…or more accurately…NOT supporting England. At least the next time we qualify, we will have less of this stuff.

I won’t be supporting England (better known as “them“). I don’t know any Scottish person who will. The media of course will be frantically trying to find people who will be supporting them and I am sure they will find a few. Also, the polls that tend to be published in the run-up to these tournaments will say that a percentage of Scottish people will be supporting England.

However, I challenge you to go into any bar or ask the majority of people in the street and you would be lucky to find one in 20. The polls won’t say that though. I think it may be a mix of dodgy polling and the kind of the thing that used to happen in England with polls in the Thatcher years where people were ashamed to say that they would vote Tory – some people answer that they will support England just because they know how they will be painted in the media if they say they don’t support England.

The first such story (and it will not be the last) this time around appears to be about the t-shirts currently on sale in Scotland with A. B. E. (Anyone But England) written on them. According to the BBC, Grampian police went into the shop and…

“advised a store worker to consider whether the display was appropriate and should be removed.”

The shop in question responded with…

“To be honest we’re absolutely flabbergasted. We have been selling this T-shirt for the past three months and we’ve had a great response. Even the English people who come into the store think it’s a laugh and just a bit of tongue-in-cheek football banter.”

This kind of t-shirt is nothing new. There are countless others on sale like in the picture at the top of the article. It is all being made an issue of now because the media  tries to promote a pro-union “we are all in this together” kind of narrative  in these situations.I explained it in the article I wrote about all this when it happened 2 years ago. I think it is worth the read because, as I said before, there is going to be a lot of this in the next few months. The paragraph I have highlighted is just to demonstrate that this kind of thing is nothing new.

Just before that article though, in an email exchange I had yesterday about this incident yesterday there were two comments from friends that more or less take the position of the shop…

“a disgrace that sums up the current social climate and the police.”

and…

Q. Who do you want to look after your financial affairs?

A. Anyone but Nick Leeson

Q. Who do you want to babysit your kids?

A. Anyone but Ian Brady

Q. Who do you want to win the World Cup?

A. Anyone but England.

What’s the issue here? I also fail to see what is racist about giving your support to 31 footballing countries from outside the UK. It’s very open minded if anything.

Here is the older but entirely relevant article..

I DON’T SUPPORT ENGLAND – May 3rd, 2008

The next major football tournament, Euro 2008, starts next month and given that neither Scotland nor England has qualified it is a chance to talk about something a bit more rationally than it is usually discussed.

England qualified for the last tournament (World cup 2006) and Scotland didn’t. When it started and Andy Murray the Scottish tennis player said he wouldn’t be supporting England there was a massive fuss in the English tabloids – and he reportedly received hate mail about the Dunblane massacre (that is where he is from). Murray had previously been reported as walking on the court when being introduced as ‘Andy Murray from England’ whereupon he corrected the umpire and walked off again and returned when reintroduced as ‘Andy Murray from Scotland’.

Murray eventually made a joke about his statement about not supporting England but I suspect this may have something to do with where he gets some of his funding.

When it happens that England qualify and Scotland don’t, the BBC in particular tend to start publishing opinion polls saying that X% of Scots are supporting England. Where they find these people I have no idea. I challenge anyone reading this to go into a pub full of Scottish people when there is an England game on the TV (doesn’t really matter what sport) and see who people are supporting.

You will find that the vast majority, like myself, would not only not be supporting England but will be actively supporting Englands opponents, probably going as far as to sing the national anthem of the other team (in a ‘da da da da’ style obviously).

The BBC, ably assisted by the tabloids, tend to paint the people doing this as ungrateful degenerates hellbent on causing unnecessary discord.

There is an obvious response to it all, which is simply..

It’s my support and I shall apportion it however I see fit.

But here are the things they usually say…

1) We’re all British.

2) The English support Scotland when they play.

3) Scotland don’t have a hope of ever winning the entire tournament.

4) If you don’t support England it means you are a racist.

Replies…

1. Geographically yes, but culturally we are not and politically we don’t all want to be…a large percentage of Scots want out.

2. We didn’t ask them to.

3. That is not the point and it is just the sort of arrogant attitude that makes me want them to lose, badly.

4. Behave.

With regard to point 2, this is often said but I have been in pubs in England and watched England and Scotland games (though not a Scotland V England game) and what I found was extremely far from universal support for Scotland.

With regard to point 4, are Dutch racist for not supporting the Germans? Are the Belgians racist for not supporting the French? Are the Koreans racist for not supporting the Japanese? Are the Ukrainians racist for not supporting the Russians? And so on and so on and so on. Can you find many examples of countries that actively support their neighbours?

There are some interesting other little stories I heard about all of this.

There was an English-owned sports store in Inverness that was told to play the England world cup CD in the run-up to the tournament. Due to the staff receiving verbal abuse daily from customers who didn’t want to listen to it the manager stopped playing it. She was then sacked for doing this.

A journalist put on an England strip when the tournament was on and walked around town in Scotland to see what would happen to him. Aside from a few shouts of ‘english bastard’ from some people going by in cars the funny part was a 70-odd year old man shuffled by him and said the same thing!

To finish, I just want to say it is obvious what the people are thinking. If Argentina beat England you suddenly see loads of Argentina shirts around the streets, if Portugal beat them then you see Portugal everywhere. I read a fantastic thing that sales of Argentinian wine in Scotland briefly doubled when Argentina beat England.

Scotland has been greatly oppressed by England through history – does one ask a slave to support his ‘owner’?