Today was a day of fan passion and examples of the majestic athletic performances.
While most of us were bunking off work for the afternoon to catch the England game, or as I was, watching over the net at my desk, there was a majestic game of tennis taking place at Wimbledon.
John Isner and Nicolas Mahut tore up the record books as their first-round match at Wimbledon lasted 10 hours and ended up 2 sets all and 59-59 games all in the final set. Bad light then stopped play. This is after playing the first two sets the evening before.
Now any other day, or non world cup year, this would have had a lead article on our flagship news channels, but because our stuttering national football team needed to win against a team low down the rankings to stay in the world cup. This football game took precedent over the tennis.
Now don't get me wrong, I watched the game, was caught up in all the action and at some point even cheered and shouted out. But it wasn't till I returned home at 7:30pm did I know anything about the tennis game. But surely the pure athleticism of Isner and Mahut far outweighs any of the efforts of the England team?
This brings to the fore the thought why do we become obsessed with our national football team? They constantly disappoint, they contain the players of our club teams we despise and abuse anytime outside of the World Cup or Euro championship, we can't relate to the players who traditionally are working class and now are paid so much from such an early age the working man has nothing in common with them.
No other national sport causes such a fever of attention. The only time I have seen anything similar is when the England cricket team won the Ashes 4 years ago (last years win didn't have the same effect, simply because it wasn't shown on terrestrial television but on Sky Sports).
Why is this?
I think this is clearly linked back to historical tribal tradition. We all have our local teams who we support, that support come from the community, the players used to come from that community, when you play the local town or village the fans flock out to see them hopefully beat the neighbours. So in that sense it is a tribal community proud sport. A case of getting one up on your neighbours so to speak.
But why do them tribes unite to support a national team?
In years gone by the country would be split into small baronies. When those small kingdoms were under threat they had to unite those baronies and defend their territory. Somewhere like Wessex would have up to 25 different sections within it that would unite under the King of that region. As those Kingdoms became more powerful one way to unite the regions and to prevent fighting between them was to marry into the different ruling families. This ultimately helped when the whole country or one particular region was under threat by invaders. All the regions would join up and fight together, and with relative success till that ole bastard William of Normandy set foot in Hastings.
This ethic of joining together still exists and has spread across the world. we all have our favourite club team but most of us support the national team and join together. Where this is most apparent is Spain. Because of the issues between Catalan and Spanish identity, Spain you would think it would be difficult to come together under a flag of Spain. but it doesn't and Spain is one of the most strong teams at this world cup.
So that, I believe, is where that passion for football comes from.
My only gripe is fat men should not wear football tops! They are made for athletic men on a pitch not beer guzzling jingoists.
Anyway good luck to the tennis fellas and also to England who now have Germany in their next game. we've no chance!!
