Team Britishness

I always find it amusing that "patriotic Englishmen" like Seb Coe are quite ready to ditch their nation in the interests of Great Britain. Patriotic Scotsmen place their own nation first. I should dearly like to hear from Seb Coe why, in his opinion, this is the case.Why is England less important to him than the artifical construct which is Britain?

Re, Britain: Not dead yet comment from aedis " is Gordon Brown's Britishness agenda such that it is prepared to kill off our national teams ?"

You must be on another planet aedis not to realise that his agenda is to kill off England!!. he doesn't give a damn about football, only his unelected political career.

Robert, I agree with you - he's only interested in his career and his preoccupation of Britshness stems from that.

The killing of our national teams is only one aspect of trying to kill off our separate national identities.

There's an interesting report on sports and "Britishness" from a government think-tank here:

http://www.opinionleader.co.uk/news.asp?pageid=275&page=3

It's an interesting read, particularly as it seems to be a major influence on the way "Britishness" has been presented by the government and the BBC.

There's several sides to this story.

There's the political one where Gordon Brown wants a British Olympic football team because he's obsessed with Britishness.

Guido thinks Brown has actually become disconnected from reality. He may be right. Despite Sepp Blatter warning about the consequences for the four national sides of fielding a GB team Gordon thinks that if he says there will be a GB team at the Olympics and speaks to Sepp then it will all come true and there will be no fallout after 2012. He also appears to believe he will be in power in 2012.

There is another view that Gordon is so obsessed with Britishness that he actually welcomes the loss of the four national teams and sees the Olympics as the way to do that. Even though he knows he will not be in power during the Olympics. There are probably a lot more people than just Gordon who think this would be a good idea.

Then there's the BOA side. All the Olympic committee and hangers on are used to working with a British team and can't see why they can't have a British football team as well. Sport or teams outside the Olympic blinkers just don't register with them and neither do they care.

Then there's the parochial, selfish London side. The Metropolitan chattering classes want a successful London Olympics and if that means the destruction of all the National football sides for a one-off under-23 competition in London in 2012 they're quite happy to accept that.

There are several dangers to playing a GB football team in the Olympics.

If all the associations pull together and field a combined team then the push to field a GB Team in all competitions will be unstoppable.

If there is no agreement and only the FA works with an Olympic GB football team that is just as dangerous. The logical step for FIFA would then be to declare that the FA are the only recognised UK football association as they were the ones to put a GB team into the Olympics and the details of how the FA, SFA, FAW and IFA sort out a GB team and GB clubs in international competition is an internal UK matter.

There is a precedent for this. FISA decided that the UK was to have one rowing team and that only the (English) Amateur Rowing Association was to represent the UK. This left the Scottish and Welsh Amateur Rowing Associations out in the cold.

What's sad are all the punters who think a GB team would be wonderful but who can't work out that it would mean the end of England, Scotland, Wales and NI as separate teams.

It may all be academic by 2012 anyway if Scotland has left the Union before then. Here's hoping.

Good post dougthedug, in my opinion the English Football Association (EFA !!!!) will embrace a Brit team with open arms, they couldn't oganize a booze up in a brewery, they can't even get their own team organized, Barwick has gone with others to follow it seems, and it new chairman David Triesman is a Labour Peer... nuf said.

If the thing does happen I imagine that it will be boycotted by most true fans. I certainly can't imagine the Tartan Army turning up bedecked in red, white and blue to sing God Save the Queen with gusto.

Toque:

"I certainly can’t imagine the Tartan Army turning up bedecked in red, white and blue to sing God Save the Queen with gusto."

True, but I suspect that the Olympics won't need the usual football fans to fill the stadiums. The fans who are there for the Olympics and who probably never go to football matches will fill the stands on their own, especially if the BBC and the papers push a GB football team as the best thing since sliced bread.

You don't even need full stadiums to make it look right, just some decent camera work which only concentrates on the filled stands.

The danger isn't the number supporters though, the danger is that simply by fielding a GB team a precedent is created for all the other football competitions.

I agree, the likes of Brown and Coe would be happy to pull people off the streets - as the Chinese did - in order to fill the stadium. The likelihood is that they'll settle for a load of day-trippers, foreign tourists and corporate bods. But then this was never about the wishes of actual football fans was it.

What I find interesting is that Scottish and Welsh fans - and players? - would be expected to sing the anthem of the English national team (and Northern Irish), the very same anthem that they normally boo.

Doesn't this pretty much exclude true Scottish and Welsh supporters from the outset?

I'll be asking a friendly MP to raise this question if the subject of a British Team arises in the Commons.

I think it is a brilliant idea and personally I would like to see a British team competing in the World Cup and the Euro's. I was born under the Union Jack and I intend to die under that proud flag too and if you separatists don't like Great Britain then you all know that are plenty of airports here that you can make use of. Traitors to Britain should basically get the hell out of here.

Well, Well, I have just read a similar post on the Britologywatch blog, his name was Barry, I think it must be G Brown writing under a pseudonym...Err, that means a false or fictitious name Barry...

Barry

Let the traitors to England head for the airports first. They are numerous and, which is worse, many hold the most exalted positions. Now that's REAL treachery.

Al Wilson, you are wrong. The traitors (I agree they are very numerous) are traitors TO ALL OF Britain in about 99.9% of cases. They hate and despise ALL Britons.

Barry

We can agree there has been no shortage of traitors or treasonous acts in the last forty years, however - to return to your original post - it seems your sense of British patriotism was so outraged you were compelled to refer to opponents of a GB football team (who have genuine concerns) as 'separatists' and 'Traitors to Britain'. That was, to put it mildly, inappropriate and excessive.