Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Once English, now a British referee…
This from the BBC site earlier today. I remember meeting up with a Scottish family in Switzerland back in the early eighties. They were still grumping about how the BBC kept claiming Glasgow Celtic as the first British team to win the European Cup back in 1967, and then it was wall to wall England when Bestie, Charlton and the rest won it a year later for England United. With Graham Poll, the ref who gave out three Yellow Cards (now heading home) to the same player in a single game (wouldn’t happen on Slugger - ed), it’s a variation on the theme: “They are English when they win, but just plain old British when they lose”. At least the residents of Tring are backing him come what may!
Mick Fealty @ 08:25 PM
Seriously? I can’t recall him being described as English. British, yes. Now an arsehole but never English.
I sense a non-story perfectly suited to Sugger’s nature of seeking the offence in everything to satisfy audience bias regardless of if it exists in reality or merely in the heads of those too used to seeing the worst in everything and trying to create links to Ireland.
Non-story elsewhere. Non-story here. But sure Slugger’s can see the sectarianism in anything.
Typical! (what a pointless nonsense entry)
Poll made a feck up. Nothing to do with Britishness etc.
Get over yerselves, it’s the World Cup. He fecked up. He’s on his way home.
Since when did anyone want to claim a ref anyway? BS!
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 09:09 PMI’m sorry Irish, but Google begs to differ.
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 09:11 PMTypical BBC, they really are the UK state mouthpiece. They can’t call him English as according to the government there is no such nationality, so they use terms such as “England fans” to describe English football supporters implying that they are followers of a football team rather than a nationality, but the police that are there to asist the German authorities are called “British” even though they are all from English forces. It is all state sponsered propeganda and it will continue until the bogus UK “nation” and their version of Pravda are no more.
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 09:17 PMLighten up IR. It’s logged under the humour category. Maybe I should have tagged it more clearly in BLOCK CAPS.
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 09:22 PMMAgnificent - he is being backed by the good burghers of Tring! This is parochial journalism at its very finest and one reason why I will never truly hate England. I can imagine the entire population gathering to give him a hero’s welcome, bunting strewn about the streets, a festive band playing him down the main street, and the local councillors threatening to boycott FIFA. It remninds me of the old Cork Examiner editorial about Stalin that finished with the line: “Be aware, Mr Stalin, the Examiner has its eye on you.”
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 09:33 PMMick,
I find this quest for offence (something flagged throughout your entry) offensive.
Some take this whole event as the purely sporting spectacular event it is.
Slugger’s quest to continually tie the World Cup to local political disputes (even when tagged as ‘humour’) is ridiculous and tiresome to some that enjoy the World Cup for what it is, like most of the world, the best sports event in the world.
IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PETTY BRITISH IRISH DISPUTES (there’s some BLOCK CAPS for you)
It’s tiresome hearing political whingers trying to spoil the fun, I as a sports fan have had enough of this crap.
Get over yerselves, still.
May they all play well, it entertains us.
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 09:34 PM“Be aware, Mr Stalin, the Examiner has its eye on you.”
Is that true ?
if so fair play to the CE, i bet auld Uncle Joe was shiteing his britches :¬)
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 09:37 PMIR,
Humour, remember? Big in the sixties? Nah, clearly before your time.
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 09:52 PMI think the origin of this story is the Tsar and the Skibereen Eagle.
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 10:22 PMhttp://skibbereen.ie/top-ten.html
#7
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 10:25 PMI stand corrected re the Examiner, although the Tsar must have been splashing his boots that mighty Skibbereen was signalling its involvement. And maybe the Examiner was just rehashing an old idea in the tradition of newspapers everywhere.
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 10:52 PMI disagree sharply IR.
I am increasingly of the view that sport’s role in national identity is increasing to the point where it is crucial.
I grew up mostly in England, and never saw the English flag. Now it is everywhere, with sharp contrasts at the Welsh and Scottish borders.
Where else can green and orange shout proudly together for Ulster and Ireland other than at rugby grounds?
PHIL is observant. It is going to be a tough decade for British unionists - UUs will have to rethink their position. There are shades of Montenegro about NI.
The constitutional wrangle has robbed UUs of participating in normal political development; they will have to work out their future with the people they live beside.
This will be increasingly easier as the people they live beside stop killing them.
The UUP is slowly but surely imploding, and it is not a leadership problem. All faith is now in the DUP - led by a churchman who believes in the literal truth of the Bible, and has trouble with the Pope. It cannot last.
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 11:23 PMAaron, the top result from the google search you link does indeed refer to the English referee being sent home. Another story, written before the blunder, also refers to him as English.
I won’t dignify Phil’s self-pitying rant with a full response, just point out the same link.
Before:
“English referee Graham Poll expects a difficult World Cup this summer because of Fifa’s high expectations.”Surely being the first British team to win the European cup is an even more spectacular achievement given the number of other teams that could have…
After:
“The English referee has paid the price for his yellow-card blunder in the Australia versus Croatia game when he booked Josip Simunic three times.”They tend to use English/England rather than British because that’s the way the associations are set up in football.
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 11:30 PMSorry, the Surely being the first British team... paragraph above should have been attached to the end of the post, not in the middle of it.
Posted by on Jun 28, 2006 @ 11:37 PMMick
Nice try with the humour, pity others didn’t pick up on it!
In my experience, out of interest, it is utterly the other way around from the way most Scots claim.
It is factually true that Celtic was the first British team to win the European Cup - occasionally it’ll even be noted that it was the first Northern European team to win it, would Scots grumble about that description?
The truth, however, is that with most sportspeople it is specifically pointed out that they are Scottish or Welsh if they are, but they are usually left with plain old ‘British’ if they are English (although this varies from sport to sport - in athletics, tennis and motor racing people tend to represent “Britain”, in snooker, soccer and bowls it’s each individual country).
The exception, in my experience, has always been Northern Ireland, which does suffer from the very syndrome that Scots claim applies to them. Memorably this was picked up by Rory Bremner in 1999, with a line which went something like “And Hakkinen comes through to win the final Grand Prix of the season, which means Britain’s Eddie Irvine… will go back to being Ireland’s Eddie Irvine”.
Humour, lads, humour…
(Should have been “North Down’s” Eddie Irvine, of course...)
Posted by on Jun 29, 2006 @ 12:31 AMSometimes I picture some of the posters to this site as a group of people frantically scanning the web for something to get upset about. Isn’t there enough to annoy in everyday life? I’m with you on this one Mick, humour, humour, humour.
Posted by on Jun 29, 2006 @ 12:39 AMIt remninds me of the old Cork Examiner editorial about Stalin that finished with the line: “Be aware, Mr Stalin, the Examiner has its eye on you.”
And that reminded me of the not so distant past when George Bush visited Hillsborough.
After the event the newsmen were talking to the local politicos who had spoken to him.It came the turn of Mark Durkan, and when asked about his meeting he physically puffed himself up and told the journalist about how he had made it absolutely clear in no uncertain terms his opposition to the Iraq warThe only pity was that the journalist didn’t ask the obvious question.....
And did President Bush look like he gave a fuck ?
Posted by on Jun 29, 2006 @ 01:30 AMRonnie Delaney had British nationality extended to him 5 yards form the finishing tape at Melbourne.
Plenty more examples I am sure.
Though the way the loyal citizens of Belfast treated Wayne McCullough was not very nice.
The Irish play this game of pas the citizenship quite well. At least most of the Engliosh players are English.
Not that the players give a shit about that. At least Vinnie Jones learned the Welsh national anthem and sang it at full voice. Look at Spain: group of perennially under performing prima donnas. Maybe this guy has the right idea:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5125016.stmOh! And why no mention of Denis Law?
Posted by on Jun 29, 2006 @ 03:51 AMI seem to recall that many nice Irish people referred to Barry McGuigan as “Barry the Brit”, when he fought in the Commonwealth games.
It ain’t all one way traffic folks.
Posted by on Jun 29, 2006 @ 04:00 AMThe Clones Cyclone aka “Barry the Brit”
McGuigan did not endear himself to everyone - He was castigated by certain groups for marrying a Protestant, and for taking British citizenship to further his career. “Barry the Brit” ran the headline in the Sinn Féin-Provisional IRA newspaper, Republican News. He always insisted that he was fighting for all the communities of Ireland. On the night of his world title fight, neither the tricolour nor the union jack flag was raised, but a neutral one (a blue flag with a white dove of peace). For any other person, the sincerity of this gesture might have been questioned, not so McGuigan.
Posted by on Jun 29, 2006 @ 07:52 AMIJP:
“In my experience, out of interest, it is utterly the other way around from the way most Scots claim”.
It’s worth adding that we are quite good at misappropriating second and third generation Irishmen and women when it suits.
Posted by on Jun 29, 2006 @ 07:56 AMTo dispel any myths about England -
John Prescott said, “There is no such nationality as Enlgish” (Prescott is Welsh)
The government manage to produce England only policies, without once mentioning the word England.
The government will only say Nations and Regions, or Scotland, Wales, NI, English Regions.
England is the only nation that does not have and is not allowed its own Parliament or national assembly.
England is certainly not getting favourable treatment, especially from the BBC, who are doing their utmost to equate anything English with racism, especially the COSG flag.
They know, as do the government, that if they lose control of England, their Empire is a gonner. “We” are doing our best to make that happen.
Posted by on Jun 29, 2006 @ 08:20 AMBeano,
If objecting to the destruction of English institutions by a UK government that doesn’t even acknowledge our existance as a nation makes me self-pitying then so be it, I must have learned from the Irish, Scots and Welsh masters.
Della,
Agree 100% with everything that you say.
Posted by on Jun 29, 2006 @ 08:48 AMTAFKABO
And did President Bush look like he gave a fuck ?I thought for a second that we’d uncovered a journalistic genius! Had that question been asked then the readership of that guy’s paper would have just increased by one.
Posted by on Jun 29, 2006 @ 09:21 AMon Barry McGuigan Nevin posted:
McGuigan did not endear himself to everyone - He was castigated by certain groups for marrying a Protestant
Utter bollocks, I live within spitting distance of Clones and I have never heard anything like this EVER.
Posted by on Jun 29, 2006 @ 11:05 AM
