Cheering for the Brits

I have a confession to make. I have a soft spot for the English. They are polite and well mannered and they think we Irish are great fun altogether. They are also really good at queuing which is something they could teach to the Australians. They think ordering beer at a busy bar counter is an Olympic sport here.  The English are so good in fact; that I think every house should have one. Preferably as a butler. They make really great butlers, as Downton Abbey has proven to the world.

I’ve denied these Anglophile feelings for a long time and kept them hidden under the Irish Republican (non violent wing) persona that I have presented to the world. This was easy to do when I lived in Ireland as I was presented daily with the little England jingoism of the British media and the drum banging rhetoric of Irish Nationalism. Now that I’m 17,000km from the epicentre of that debate, I find that I have a fresh outlook towards my old neighbours.

I used to support two teams. Ireland and anyone playing England. When it came to World Cups, I was actually happy if Ireland didn’t qualify and England did. If we were there, I would have only one team to support with little chance of success. If England were there, I had thirty one teams to support and this has resulted in me being successful in every World Cup since 1966.

It took a while for my old prejudices to fade away and they haven’t completely disappeared. Football remains a sore point. Try as I might, the sight of John Terry belting out “God Save the Queen” before a match is enough to make me scream passionately for the opposition. Even if they are the Pol Pot 11.

Other sports offered a gentler introduction into supporting England. My first leaning towards the dark side was in cricket. Maybe it’s because the best Irish players end up playing for England or maybe it’s because they used to be pathetic underdogs. But I was caught up in the Freddie Flintoff revolution in 2005 and found myself cheering for them against Australia.

This support has grown since I moved to Australia, particularly during the Ashes series, because the Aussie media is even more obnoxious on this subject than the BBC ever were. In fact I now find myself supporting any team playing Australia in pretty much every sport. The media are at fault again. When it comes to sport, Australians think humility is how people with a lisp describe hot and sticky weather.

The recent Olympics were a case in point. Channel 9 procured the rights here to show the games on free to air TV. I say free, but this ignores the cost of having to watch ads every ten minutes. And not even funny ads like you see during the Superbowl on American TV, but the same two dumb ads for a vitamin company and a Supermarket which were repeated ad nausem for the duration of the games.

Australia a multi-cultural country; with people from all points of the globe. But you wouldn’t think this from watching Channel 9. During the opening ceremony, their highlight was not Danny Boyle’smagnificent pageant but the arrival of the Australian team into the stadium. They followed the team the whole way around the track and then onto the weird little hill where the athletes assembled.

This meant that when they returned to the parade, Ecuador was coming in (probably with Julian Assange hidden amongst them).

Apparently, Australians of Austrian or Belgian background have never seen their home countries enter an Olympic stadium.

Thankfully, I have Foxtel who offered 9 channels during the games and even though they were also Australian focused, their breath of coverage meant that they occasionally had to show athletes from other countries. Due to the time difference between here and London, I mainly got to see events held in the early afternoon in the UK. This tended to be outdoor stuff like equestrian (what is that horse dancing nonsense by the way?), sailing and rowing.

This led me to realise that there are a lot of posh sports at the Olympics which I guess is not surprising when they the games were reinvented by a baron. Charlie Brooker made a very pertinent point in the Guardian. He said that you would need your own castle and grounds to practice for these sports. It seems that Ireland punches above its weight in these upper class endeavours, which shows that the death of the Celtic Tiger hasn’t impacted on those who want to own a boat or an expensive horse.

We also punch at every weight in boxing and like everyone else of Irish heritage I rejoiced in the victory of Katie Taylor, even if there were only 11 competitors in her competition.

We also won 3 other medals in boxing, two of them by fighters from Belfast. This led to some questions at work because Australians can’t understand how boxers from Northern Ireland can win medals for Ireland while rowers from that part of the world were winning medals for Team GB. I tried to explain the dual citizenship outcomes of the Good Friday agreement but it was met with glazed expressions. I come from a unique country that can compete at international sport in a different manner to how it is represented in international law.

But perhaps it’s not that unique. My new friends, the English, are similarly muddled. They compete under that name in Football and Rugby. But under the name of Team GB at the Olympics. Even this is misleading as they are really Team GB and Northern Ireland. Or Team United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But TUKOGBNI doesn’t really roll off the tongue.

But congrats to them anyway, I loved the games and realise now that I have more in common with the English than any other country. But don’t tell anyone. I’m still getting over the shock of this.