The worst Murray-related one was the backlash in England when he said he’d be supporting their opponents at the World Cup (Paraguay if I remember correctly). It was a comment made in the middle of some joking with Tim Henman about Scotland’s poor footballing performance, but from the reaction you’d think he’d suggested killing anyone south of the border. Not England’s finest moment.
There’s certainly some truth to the “British winners, Scottish losers” thing, but the English tend to be harder on losers of whatever origin than the smaller countries, due to the (false) perception that we “deserve” to win. That said, it remains mildly irritating that most English will support Wales, Scotland or Ireland, but that it’s not reciprocated. Understandable, but still mildly irritating.
I think many got very used to supporting the Republic of Ireland when none of the home nations qualified for USA’94. It also helped that half the team had regional British accents.
So yeah, I do. I go England->Scotland->Wales or Northern Ireland->Republic of Ireland->Canada->English speaking country->any team that a friend wants to win
I don’t follow much sport these days but yes, I certainly have done. Certainly when they had Jack Charlton managing, and players who were born in England, or played regularly in First Division (as it was).
The combined Irish Rugby team perhaps helps as well, and I’d obviously support them over the French! It may not make all that much sense, but that’s the way I feel, and plenty of people I know feel as well.
ETA Maybe this is a bad day to joke about hating the French, so I hope that there’s no-one here affected by the tragedies there who could be offended.
Thanks, both interesting replies, both make sense.
I just asked out of interest not for any kind of point scoring.
I quite like to see France win because I sometimes holiday there but I’ve never wanted the Republic of Ireland to win. Nothing against them just don’t care if they ever win.
Not really. If you check back it is one of my original arguments exactly. I see the situation as win win no matter what the Westminster result. If Labour win there will be accommodation in order to form a government. If the Tories form a government which is at total opposition to Scottish views, it will increase the pressure for a ferendum. I raised the exact problem of the Brexit referendum being against the will of the Celtic fringes.
With an SNP Scottish Government, a majority of the population in favour of massive further devolution at least, and with the SNP possibly being power brokers in Westminster in six months, how can further devolution possibly be avoided?
Personally, I think that saying that Judaism is more violent than Islam because of the Bible is a facile argument. Of course a Bronze Age story will be violent - just look at the Iliad, another prominent work from that period and area of the world, which makes the Bible look like Shel Silverstein. A religion should be judged based on how it is now, not how it was three thousand years ago. The same applies to the High Medieval culture of the Crusaders.