Cheering England? I am...and here’s why
I’LL be supporting England in the World Cup. I know, I know. I should have gone for one of the more politically correct options. Russia, perhaps, or those nice boys from Saudi Arabia.
Because in 2018 in Scotland, supporting England in a football tournament is tantamount to, well, walking down Glasgow’s Sauchiehall street in an England strip. You just don’t do it.
The ‘anyone but England’ mentality is already out in force, with plenty of Scots preparing to don their Tunisia shirts for England’s first match.
And if 2014’s tournament – when a Scot in a See You Jimmy hat was seen screaming with delight among Uruguayan supporters when the team knocked England out – is anything to go by, this is only the beginning.
Even politicians are at it. Nicola Sturgeon is supporting Iceland because she ‘drew them in the office sweep’, which is about as hoary an old dodge as ‘the chihuahua ate my homework’.
Ruth Davidson is also playing this political game of football, claiming she is supporting Australia ‘because two of the squad – Jackson Irvine and Jamie Maclaren – played for Scotland Under-19s, my sister lived there for a while, and I spent a bit of time there’.
Heavens, she’ll put her back out with all that ducking and diving. My U-TURN of the week: plans for a Scottish version of London’s Oyster card – a handy smartcard that can be used across different forms of transport and can be ‘loaded up’ with cash in advance – have been dropped. Why? Probably because it’s far too sensible. reasons for supporting England are simple: they are a part of Britain, and our nearest neighbours. I have family and friends there, as well as English friends in Scotland.
My partner is English, as is his family, all of whom are utterly baffled that Scots wouldn’t support the English because after all, they always support the Scots.
But it’s more than that. I am supporting England because the ‘anyone but England’ attitude is tedious and embarrassing. It is the very embodiment of small-minded Scottishness and I thought we’d grown out of it.
AND it’s also political, as Andrew Wilson – author of the controversial Growth Commission report – will tell you. Back in 2002 as a young Nationalist MSP and finance spokesman, with a glittering political career ahead of him, Wilson was inexplicably frozen out of the party after saying that Scots should support England in the World Cup, and lost his seat a year later.
No wonder Miss Sturgeon’s developed a sudden interest in Iceland.
I know England can get a little, well, exuberant when it comes to a tournament and that this has, historically, rubbed us Scots up the wrong way.
Yes, they go on a bit, especially about themselves and specifically about – groan – 1966, but to be honest I find it slightly endearing, like the old boy down the pub who tells you every time you bump into him that he once bought Billy Connolly a pint.
And consider this. Perhaps all that gung-ho positivity – I believe the technical term is a can-do attitude – has served England and its fans well.
Instead of the cynical, grumbling ‘snatching defeat from the jaws of victory’ mindset that has dominated Scottish football for an unfathomly long time, the English genuinely go into these tournaments thinking they might win. It’s hilarious. It’s ridiculous. And it’s also not the worst idea.
Perhaps, instead of booing England, we Scots should watch and learn.