My mobile phone company have just sent me a text message encouraging me to sign up for a service where they will send me more text messages that tell me how the British tennis player Tim Henman is doing at Wimbledon.
They obviously realise that the vast majority of the UK population are keen to have information about Henman’s games as soon as possible. I find this very difficult to understand, but I freely admit that I’m in the minority here as I’ve never really understood the idea of patriotism – especially when applied to sporting competition.
It’s rare that I’ll watch sport. It’s rarer that I’ll decide to support one side or the other. It’s far more likely that I’ll just want to watch a good contest and won’t care who wins or loses. It seems that most people don’t do that. They want to cheer for one side or the other. And if it’s an international competition they will often choose to support the competitor from their country.
This is where I get lost. Why should anyone feel any closer connection to a competitor (or a team) if they happen to live in the same country? Why is it nice (as I’m often told) to see Britain doing well? In what way does it improve my life if Tim Henman does well at Wimbledon. It doesn’t, of course.
If I felt I wanted to support a particular player at Wimbledon, I’d make that choice on logical grounds – like how well they play or whether or not I like them as a person. From what I hear, Henman is past his best so he’d fail on the first test and he’s far too sexist for me to like him as a person. He’s said some very disparaging things about the women’s game in the past.
So, no, I’m not particularly interested in hearing how my countrymen (and women) are doing. I’m far more interested in seeing a good match between evenly matched players.
Does that make me very strange?
In other words you don’t think that the fact of being born in some place makes automatically this place’s sports team (or food / religion / way of life) superior ? How weird. You must be one of those crypto anarchists that want to wipe out the foundations of our civilization. Hopefully our reeducation camps will learn you how to appreciate properly all those things. Then, you’ll feel better. Be seeing you.
In the UK, this seems to be an almost uniquely English trait. You don’t see these traits in the Scots, Irish or Welsh.
English people are not allowed to be patriotic.
It has been beaten out of them over time with the constant hijacking of English national symbols by the BNP and the consequential damning of them.
The banning of the St George cross in various areas of London for example – in some areas people in England are not allowed to display their national flag because its “racist”.Under such conditions for such a long time, is it surprising that the English identity is one of being apologetic for who they are?
Sport is the only “allowed” avenue for patriotism for the English. As such they’ll support anything and anyone who flies their flag. Who can blame them.