It's not something we're used too in England, the religious aspect anyway, though the tribal rivalries of football fans we're well used too. However what we wouldn't do, is call for a football clubs fans to not fly a flag that represents their country, after all, that would be a bit racist, wouldn't it?
Mail.
Ok, lets get the sodding obvious bit out of the way first, whilst Berwick Rangers are a British club, so are the rest of the teams playing in the Scottish Football League! Berwick are different only in the fact that they are based in England!For almost 130 years the proud supporters of Berwick Rangers have revelled in the fact that they are a British team playing in the Scottish Football League.
They call themselves The Borderers, and proudly display both the St Andrew's cross and the St George's cross on their scarves and merchandise.As sectarian implies religion, I cannot see how flying a flag of St George is being sectarian, what it does imply that this club is English and that it's not sectarianism we're talking about here, but racism. They aren't particularly protestant, they certainly aren't Scottish (much as many Scots would claim)
But now the club's supporters have been told that they can't show the St George's cross when attending away games - because it incites sectarian tension.
Personally I think it's rank hypocrisy of Stranraer FC to claim sectarianism, when the plain facts speak for themselves, they are indulging in racism. However by calling it sectarianism they hope to get away with it, save only that the idiots at the Daily Mail decided to do an article on it.
4 annotations:
"Personally I think it's rank hypocrisy of Stranraer FC to claim sectarianism, when the plain facts speak for themselves, they are indulging in racism. However by calling it sectarianism they hope to get away with it, save only that the idiots at the Daily Mail decided to do an article on it" ...
In this case QM, I have to disagree ..
I think that the DM is right to expose this for what it really is (as you rightly point out in the body of your post) ..
Had they not done so, how many other people .. not from the immediate areas affected, would be any the wiser ?
Personally, I don't give a toss about football, or the people who play it, support it, or finance it ..
But I do object when people start using specious reasons to further their own agenda and attempt to blacken the name of my country in the process ..
Can't they sort of get one of those 'No' templates, as are used for 'No Smoking', and place a wee St Andrew's cross in the hinterground?
Failing that, a Union flag with the St Andrews' component removed?
That should go down well.
@ Capt. Haddock. The reason I called the Daily Mail idiots is not because they highlighted the issue, but because they called Berwick Rangers a British club playing in a Scottish league.
In which case, my unreserved apologies QM ..
You'll no doubt have already realised, that "Football" and all that it entails, is not my "specialised" subject .. ;)
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