Sunday, July 8, 2012

Scotland salutes you, Andy

Well done to Andy Murray for giving it a right good go today. I was a bit worried that the match was going to be another anti-climax after the huge build-up, but no-one can doubt that Murray stepped up to the mark this time. And although it's not much consolation at the moment, I've always felt that in an ideal world it would be more fitting if he won his elusive first Grand Slam at Melbourne or New York, well away from the annual circus of trying to bludgeon him into maximal "Britishness" (aka Greater Englishness). I literally burst out laughing when the TV coverage commenced with Kenneth Wolstenholme's commentary from the 1966 World Cup final - I trust even some of our unionist friends were raising their eyebrows at such a grossly inappropriate choice. Admittedly there was a compilation of Scottish sporting highlights later, but it felt tokenistic in comparison.

Murray is of course a British player - Scottish players are registered as British for every tournament other than the Commonwealth Games. But that could change. After what happened with Peter Nicol a decade ago, we perhaps shouldn't make any assumptions about which country Murray would choose to represent in a post-independence scenario (he does have an English granny, after all). If he did go with Scotland, however, what a moment of pride it would be for this country as he stepped onto the Centre Court of Wimbledon in 2016 as a fully-fledged, Scottish-registered player.

Last but not least, congratulations to Federer - it hasn't been mentioned much yet, but among the other records he's broken, he's just become the first player over the age of 30 to win Wimbledon since Arthur Ashe in 1975.

4 comments:

  1. And according to Sue Barker we have a new FM Sir Alex Ferguson, the BBC are an arrogant intellectually devoid species.

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  2. Tennis is the third most boring sport after

    - Swimming
    - Archery


    - Netball

    !!! The fourth most boring sport!

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  3. The long jump is pretty boring and so is the high jump. And I’ve never really seen the point of the shot putt or the hammer. Come to think of it, watching people running round an oval track is boring but not half as boring as watching people walking. Ping pong is dull and so is badminton and who can honestly say that they’ve been sitting on the edge of their seat watching people shooting. Beach volleyball has to be the most boring ‘sport’ on earth after walking but the javelin, judo, diving, synchronised swiiming and taekwondo run them close as boring spectator sports. I could go on but I’ve never really understood the prejudice against making darts an olympic sport. Darts is no more or no less boring than most other sports, so why not just shove it in the olympics with the other boring sports?

    I can forgive all these boring sports, after all, lots of things are boring and, thankfully, many of them don’t make it on to our tv screens. What I can’t forgive is that, in a few weeks time, we are being invited to watch a bunch of narcissistic drug addicts competing with each other to advance the interests of corporate capitalism and we’re supposed to ‘celebrate’ this. That’s not boring, that’s just weird.

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  4. Anonymous, you left out Formula 1 for some inexplicable reason. Now that is boring. And cricket, and game that takes several days to complete is by its very definition going to make minds wander. In fact any sport that is watched rather than participated in...

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