As many of you will know, I am a great partisan of, as the
song has it, “Saint Mirren from Pais-a-lee”.
About fifteen, indeed on reflection more like twenty, years
ago, our great rivals, Greenock Morton,
were threatened with going out of business. Some cowboy, whose details now have
faded in my memory, had gained a significant shareholding in the Greenock Club
and was threatening to put them down so that he could sell off Crappielow (as
we in Paisley know it) for redevelopment.
Anyway, this was an eventuality we Saints could not
contemplate. So a “friendly” St Mirren against Morton match was arranged at the
self same stadium to raise funds for those trying to save the Greenock side.
I went with one of my nephews who was just reaching the age
that he was not prepared to do something without at least some rationale being
given. So as we drove down the M8 I was subject to some interrogation.
“Why are we going to this?”
“To try to help save the Morton”
“But we hate the Morton, don’t we?”
“Of course we do, but we wouldn’t want to see them going out
of business.”
“Why?”
“Because then we’d have nobody to hate”
“Couldn’t we just hate somebody else.....I don’t know, Kilmarnock
or somebody?”
“It wouldn’t be the same. Anyway, it is Ayr United who hate
Kilmarnock. St Mirren hate Morton. That is the natural order of things.”
“Why?”
“Look, stop asking silly questions. It just is.”
As history now records, Morton were saved and, as a result, still,
on the darkest of February Saturdays, as Saints fans troop out of New Greenhill Road even after the
most miserable of defeats, our fans will fall silent as one particular result from the lower leagues is announced over the
Tannoy. And if Morton have lost as well we will muster a ragged cheer and
console ourselves that the day could have been worse.
Sporting rivalries are in the very nature of Team sports.
And in their pursuit much heat can be generated. In the real world, nobody from
Paisley thinks the “soapdodgers” from Greenock have a problem with their personal
hygiene, any more than those from the Arse of the Bank truly believe the entire
population of my own home town are addicted to Heroin. Mind you, these are surely mild insults
compared to the revelation, as Tim parks reported in his book about Italian
football followers, that the supporters
of Hellas Verona refer to their rivals from Vicenza as mangi gatti (cat eaters) in
memory of a Sixteenth Century siege during which the residents of that latter
city were indeed reduced to that sad condition.
But it is a mistake to assume that sporting rivalry has a
wider resonance. I readily confess to
being in the “anybody but England” camp when it comes to team sports. Earlier
today, while watching the Rugby Sevens, I discovered, alongside many other Scots I
suspect, a previously unrecognised enthusiasm
for Samoa. So what? That is hardly the
basis for a system of Government. And anybody who does surely needs to have a
long think about themselves.
And anyway, team sports are quite different from individual
events. Whoever a great athlete competes for in an individual contest, I am
happy to give them my support. I might choose a favourite and I readily
recognise that one reason for greater favouritism might be greater familiarity with
one competitor over another . But the idea
that i would be hostile to any competitor because of their nationality seems to
me to be bizarre. And for what it is
worth I believe that is a sentiment shared by the great mass of the population,
whether dedicated sports watchers or otherwise.
Yet in their belief that the Commonwealth Games might
represent a change in their fortunes the Nationalists seem to have ignored this
relatively obvious observation.
To support Scotland and Scottish competitors comes naturally
to all of us who live here because we are, or at least become, familiar with
them. Even if they are from Greenock.
I am as surprised and pleased as anybody to learn that we
appear to be some sort of Commonwealth superpower when it comes to Judo. I say
that even while being less than clear while watching it who is winning and why.
But it has surely nothing to do with Scottish Independence to be enthusiastic
about Scotland, or Scottish competitors, in a sporting context. As with so much
else, it is also necessary to be antipathetic to England. And to believe anyway that what happens in the
sporting field, particularly in the “Friendly
Games”, is capable of having any
political significance.
I have no idea what the Nats expected here. That Greg
Rutherford or Laura Trott or Nicola Adams would found themselves booed as bearing
the hated colours of our oppressors? Really?
Well, if they did they are as deluded as they appear to be
about everything else.
Indeed, I suspect that if the Games have any impact at all
on the Referendum it will be the exact opposite of Nationalist hopes. The Games have brought an awful lot of English people to Scotland. And
contrary to Nationalist stereotype they have not spent their time here treating
the local population with little concealed disdain while talking loudly in
upmarket hotels about their indifference to the poor. Rather they have proved
to be remarkably like.....us.
Except perhaps that when it came to the Rugby sevens they
did not share our enthusiasm for Samoa.
