It's one of my favourite things about living up here. The sport
The Scottish (and the Welsh for that matter) genuinely hate the idea of England winning, will support anyone against them, and genuinely get upset about the whole thing. The English, on the other hand, barely care what happens to Scotland and Wales. If the Scottish and Welsh actually invested as much emotion in supporting their own team as they did into hating the English sporting teams they might even qualify for something one day.

It's quite sweet really. Silly Teuchters.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Wed 10 Aug 2011, 17:11, 3 replies, latest was 15 years ago)

interesting.....
SO you think the emotion invested in supporting a team leads to their success? This would explain how people feel they are part of their team's victory. I hadn't realised this, it makes sense of a few things.
( CQ Knows the truth, all of it., Wed 10 Aug 2011, 17:14, Reply)

I know it makes a difference to me personally in playing sport
When you have strong support from the sidelines, yeah. I'm guessing that multiplies up when it's 50,000 people screaming for you.

I'm being facetious about the whole Scots/Welsh thing though - they are passionate supporters of their own teams really. It's just the hatred for English sporting teams even if they have nothing against actual English people that I find amusing.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Wed 10 Aug 2011, 17:17, Reply)

well, it helps explain the 'we' thing a bit for me.
cheers for that. I still think it's bollocks, but nice to understand the mechanism.
( CQ Knows the truth, all of it., Wed 10 Aug 2011, 17:22, Reply)

I agree with you about club stuff, I just feel there are more important things to worry about in the world than that
but internationals, they represent their countries so they represent the people, so "we" is OK in my mind.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Wed 10 Aug 2011, 17:24, Reply)

I'm not even sure about that in politics, never mind sport.
But that's a discussion for another day I think.

Suffice it to say that for me personally someone does not represent me just because they were born in the same geographical area, I am aware most people feel differently.

I'll just about allow some one represents me if I voted for them and they got in, but this very rarely happens.
( CQ Knows the truth, all of it., Wed 10 Aug 2011, 17:28, Reply)

I'm not saying you have to think "we"
If you don't feel they represent you, then that's fine, I'm just saying that if I think they do then it's OK for me to say "we"

although, I'd never have fucking picked Ravi Bopara so perhaps I should go back to "they"
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Wed 10 Aug 2011, 17:32, Reply)

That's probably a big reason why they hate us.
They know we think they're irrelevancies because we've been the dominant country since the dawn of nations in Britain.
( Kroney, Wed 10 Aug 2011, 17:16, Reply)

Too true.
The amount of nationalist sentiment that our celtic fringe and colonial adolescents bring to the table whenever an England game is afoot is quite astonishing. For England the grudge games are against Germany and to a lesser extent the French or the Americans, depending on the sport. When it comes to 'playing' England, the Scots imagine themselves to be in some alternate Mel Gibson-created universe where every last one of them believes that their mother was subjected to prima nocte...
(Happybara The jungle came alive and took him, Wed 10 Aug 2011, 17:24, Reply)