Davied14 Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 Piece from www.football365.com: Some of England's footballers might get a bit of a shock on Tuesday when England play Scotland at Celtic Park. Things are different up here. It'll be noisy. Very noisy. It will be hostile. There will not be those depressingly huge swathes of empty posh seats where people opt to eat and drink rather than watch the football. In Scotland, the prawn sandwich-ing of football has not made any in-roads. The middle-classification of the game, so common in some parts of the English game, holds no sway here. You may find this sad or you may revel in it, depending on how you view the culture of football, but it is this spirit which will fire the bellies of the Scottish fans on Tuesday. They won't be going there to sneer at their own players, because right now, there is little or no loathing of Scottish players by Scottish fans. England will face a unified, well-motivated side that has talent and commitment, a side that has a very good chance of qualifying from their European group for the first time in a long time with a record currently equal to Germany. It is the oldest international fixture dating back to 1872 and because it is played in Scotland, there will be a frenetic intensity that is rarely experienced by some of England's players. God help any of them that plays their football every week at the most placid top-flight English league grounds. It will seem as though the people of Scotland are insane by contrast. It will be an occasion to properly relish, for those able to do so. Equally, it may crush others. In a situation like this, it is in the natural way of things that the game matters more to the smaller nation than to the larger. Scotland is not England's enemy the way England is Scotland's enemy. There are those who have argued that the expanded qualifying campaign has made the whole thing weaker and bloated, but for Scotland, it has ignited the possibility of getting to a tournament at last. They are on the crest of a wave and it's all very exciting. Despite recent results, 'exciting' can't be a word used of England or England fans. Indeed, the feeling that the whole process is an extended Groundhog Day is hard to resist, whereby England win well in qualifying only to be awful in a tournament. It also needs to be said that these are not normal times in Scotland. As I said, things are different here now. Very different. The crowd will likely be drawn largely from Glasgow, a part of Scotland which voted in favour of independence. Whichever way you voted in the referendum, and wherever you're from, the campaign awakened a new sense of nation for some and crystallised it for others. No-one was untouched. It might be hard to understand in England just what a ferment Scotland was in pre-referendum and indeed, ever since. The status quo is no longer sustainable. This was a proper citizens' movement with an engaged electorate who, on a person-to-person basis, talked it through and tried to do what they thought was right. It was brilliantly all-consuming, wholly positive and largely lacking the cynicism that has become the default flavour of public discourse in the past 30 years in Britain. It has put fire in the hearts of many who live here and regardless of which way we voted, there is a drive to create a better, more fair, more just, less exploitative society; a desire to break from the neo-liberal capitalist hegemony that many in Scotland feel has blighted life in Britain for 30 years and led to food banks in every town. This is not the politics of envy that it is so readily painted as by those who do not understand its spirit, rather it is the politics of hope and empathy driven by an understanding that collective well-being is axiomatic to individual happiness. It is a culture which actively seeks to appreciate the value of things rather than merely know their price. A society that is tired of seeing the majority work harder and harder to make a small elite rich. Scotland is not without its problems and intolerances, to say the very least, but it feels, quite palpably, that better days lie ahead and I know that isn't a feeling you encounter often in England. While there is little hatred for the English per se, outside of the usual suspects, the English players are in some ways representative of the failed culture which Scotland wants to break from. It's not personal or specific to these men, but both literally and emblematically, they are the over-rewarded elite, the over-vaunted and over-indulged which has been sold to us as a principle worth striving for and living by. They are the blacked-out Porsche Cayenne windows which separate the privileged from the people. And we really don't want that in Scotland, again, not uniquely, I know. But when you throw sporting rivalry together with cultural identity and political future, you get a uniquely flammable situation and it is into this arena that England's players will walk on Tuesday. That isn't a normal situation. If England do not take it seriously, don't commit to it fully, they will certainly get beaten. Currently, the Scottish collective spirit under Gordon Strachan is superior to the English collective spirit under Roy Hodgson. Strachan seems to have walked into the Scotland job at exactly the right time in his career. He seems ideally suited to it and appears totally at ease in this environment. A side of Scotland's limited resources cannot rely on individual brilliance, they must be more than the sum of their parts in order to compete at all, and that is a quality which England rarely seem able to conjure. It will be a proper test of England's mettle, the like of which they rarely experience. The very opposite of a sterile, meaningless friendly, if they come out of it victorious, it will be a real achievement. How they deal with it will be absolutely fascinating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheReid Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 Fantastic piece, let's get into them.. Let's make this atmosphere something never seen before! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest allyc Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 (edited) Love it...come on Scotland,into these barst.. Edited November 17, 2014 by allyc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
runningtings Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 I dunno, struggling to get up for the game after the glory of Friday night to be honest. Hopefully come the night it'll be different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robroysboy Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 Lets give that granny basher rooney the mcgreedy treatment. Booooooooooooooo! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest allyc Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 All of them.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hirta_1976 Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 Yes, make it hostile and intimidating. Looking back, some of the Irish lads probably didn't expect that atmosphere either. It was immense! Replicated tomorrow hopefully ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1ANDYP Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 I was reading a lot of the England fans are going to the " rangers" pubs "so they are safe . Also a few taking rangers flags as they think it will annoy us. Also what do you think the chances are of them buying Scotland end tickets, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Squirrelhumper Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 Good. They will be most welcome in likes of London, Bristol Bar etc. No sane person would go there anyway. Hovels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
northernscum Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 Really good article that. I am properly looking forward to the game now and it should be a pretty full on atmosphere with a near sell out. No doubt Broadfoot, Regan and co will be high fiving each other, but that is an argument for another day. Rest assured it is an argument which will not be going away SFA, not by a long chalk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bzzzz Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 Excellent article. Cannae wait... I'm still angry and THEY are gettin it! SFA, you'll keep till this is done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hirta_1976 Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 Lets give that granny basher rooney the mcgreedy treatment. Booooooooooooooo! Rob. How about curtailing your signature. The YT video is annoying. Sorry! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andymac Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 Rob. How about curtailing your signature. The YT video is annoying. Sorry! Sorry, seconded. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grantyboy1983 Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 Rob. How about curtailing your signature. The YT video is annoying. Sorry! Thirded, GTR had a video signature for a while too if i recall which he was politely asked to remove and he did so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nobby Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 Piece from www.football365.com: Some of England's footballers might get a bit of a shock on Tuesday when England play Scotland at Celtic Park. Things are different up here. It'll be noisy. Very noisy. It will be hostile. There will not be those depressingly huge swathes of empty posh seats where people opt to eat and drink rather than watch the football. In Scotland, the prawn sandwich-ing of football has not made any in-roads. The middle-classification of the game, so common in some parts of the English game, holds no sway here. You may find this sad or you may revel in it, depending on how you view the culture of football, but it is this spirit which will fire the bellies of the Scottish fans on Tuesday. They won't be going there to sneer at their own players, because right now, there is little or no loathing of Scottish players by Scottish fans. England will face a unified, well-motivated side that has talent and commitment, a side that has a very good chance of qualifying from their European group for the first time in a long time with a record currently equal to Germany. It is the oldest international fixture dating back to 1872 and because it is played in Scotland, there will be a frenetic intensity that is rarely experienced by some of England's players. God help any of them that plays their football every week at the most placid top-flight English league grounds. It will seem as though the people of Scotland are insane by contrast. It will be an occasion to properly relish, for those able to do so. Equally, it may crush others. In a situation like this, it is in the natural way of things that the game matters more to the smaller nation than to the larger. Scotland is not England's enemy the way England is Scotland's enemy. There are those who have argued that the expanded qualifying campaign has made the whole thing weaker and bloated, but for Scotland, it has ignited the possibility of getting to a tournament at last. They are on the crest of a wave and it's all very exciting. Despite recent results, 'exciting' can't be a word used of England or England fans. Indeed, the feeling that the whole process is an extended Groundhog Day is hard to resist, whereby England win well in qualifying only to be awful in a tournament. It also needs to be said that these are not normal times in Scotland. As I said, things are different here now. Very different. The crowd will likely be drawn largely from Glasgow, a part of Scotland which voted in favour of independence. Whichever way you voted in the referendum, and wherever you're from, the campaign awakened a new sense of nation for some and crystallised it for others. No-one was untouched. It might be hard to understand in England just what a ferment Scotland was in pre-referendum and indeed, ever since. The status quo is no longer sustainable. This was a proper citizens' movement with an engaged electorate who, on a person-to-person basis, talked it through and tried to do what they thought was right. It was brilliantly all-consuming, wholly positive and largely lacking the cynicism that has become the default flavour of public discourse in the past 30 years in Britain. It has put fire in the hearts of many who live here and regardless of which way we voted, there is a drive to create a better, more fair, more just, less exploitative society; a desire to break from the neo-liberal capitalist hegemony that many in Scotland feel has blighted life in Britain for 30 years and led to food banks in every town. This is not the politics of envy that it is so readily painted as by those who do not understand its spirit, rather it is the politics of hope and empathy driven by an understanding that collective well-being is axiomatic to individual happiness. It is a culture which actively seeks to appreciate the value of things rather than merely know their price. A society that is tired of seeing the majority work harder and harder to make a small elite rich. Scotland is not without its problems and intolerances, to say the very least, but it feels, quite palpably, that better days lie ahead and I know that isn't a feeling you encounter often in England. While there is little hatred for the English per se, outside of the usual suspects, the English players are in some ways representative of the failed culture which Scotland wants to break from. It's not personal or specific to these men, but both literally and emblematically, they are the over-rewarded elite, the over-vaunted and over-indulged which has been sold to us as a principle worth striving for and living by. They are the blacked-out Porsche Cayenne windows which separate the privileged from the people. And we really don't want that in Scotland, again, not uniquely, I know. But when you throw sporting rivalry together with cultural identity and political future, you get a uniquely flammable situation and it is into this arena that England's players will walk on Tuesday. That isn't a normal situation. If England do not take it seriously, don't commit to it fully, they will certainly get beaten. Currently, the Scottish collective spirit under Gordon Strachan is superior to the English collective spirit under Roy Hodgson. Strachan seems to have walked into the Scotland job at exactly the right time in his career. He seems ideally suited to it and appears totally at ease in this environment. A side of Scotland's limited resources cannot rely on individual brilliance, they must be more than the sum of their parts in order to compete at all, and that is a quality which England rarely seem able to conjure. It will be a proper test of England's mettle, the like of which they rarely experience. The very opposite of a sterile, meaningless friendly, if they come out of it victorious, it will be a real achievement. How they deal with it will be absolutely fascinating. My favourite bit is the utter bollox about the "Scottish collective spirit under Gordon Strachan is superior" You may well win tonight but you are so up your own arse it is unbelievable !!! I have no objection to bigging yourself up but there is an awful lot of guff in there and with any luck Roy will read this balanced piece out at training this morning Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davied14 Posted November 18, 2014 Author Share Posted November 18, 2014 My favourite bit is the utter bollox about the "Scottish collective spirit under Gordon Strachan is superior" You may well win tonight but you are so up your own arse it is unbelievable !!! I have no objection to bigging yourself up but there is an awful lot of guff in there and with any luck Roy will read this balanced piece out at training this morning Written by an Englishman, John Nicholson. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nobby Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 Written by an Englishman, John Nicholson. I dont care if it was written by William Shakespeare, its bollox and if you believe that shite you are suffering from delusions of grandeur on a grand scale. You may well win tonight, fair play if you do, but if you do, that piece will still be bollox Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davied14 Posted November 18, 2014 Author Share Posted November 18, 2014 I dont care if it was written by William Shakespeare, its bollox and if you believe that shite you are suffering from delusions of grandeur on a grand scale. You may well win tonight, fair play if you do, but if you do, that piece will still be bollox So an article written by an Englishman saying Scotland's team spirit is superior to England's proves that Scots have delusions of grandeur? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoobydoo Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 I thought it was bollocks too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mariokempes56 Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 I dont care if it was written by William Shakespeare, its bollox and if you believe that shite you are suffering from delusions of grandeur on a grand scale. You may well win tonight, fair play if you do, but if you do, that piece will still be bollox Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShedTA Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 I dont care if it was written by William Shakespeare, its bollox and if you believe that shite you are suffering from delusions of grandeur on a grand scale. You may well win tonight, fair play if you do, but if you do, that piece will still be bollox bollox it may be but it's not as much bollox as you have just written Nobby. no one I know is deluded. no one assumes we will win, but if we do you will hear about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShedTA Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 most of the England players have played in big noisy games - doubt that will bother them too much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nobby Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 So an article written by an Englishman saying Scotland's team spirit is superior to England's proves that Scots have delusions of grandeur? Nope if you read what I said, I said "if you believe that shite" If that piece was written the other way round by a scotsman bigging up England It would still be bollox !! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jock strap Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 Glory glory what a helluva way to die....... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nobby Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 (edited) bollox it may be but it's not as much bollox as you have just written Nobby. no one I know is deluded. no one assumes we will win, but if we do you will hear about it. Crack on, its what football rivalry is all about. Take the last time Scotland beat England at Wembley. It took an Englishman to do it Edit and im not talking about Bzzzzz !! Edited November 18, 2014 by Nobby Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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