Phnom Penh '86
New member
...True or false? I ask this in the aftermath of the England football result last week, as well as a general, ever-present issue in the UK media.
Allow me to quote a passage from the sports biography 'The Rivals: Chris Evert versus Martina Navratilova'. The passage concerns seventies British tennis player John Lloyd, who was one in a very long line of British men vilified for not winning the Wimbledon Championships:
"When it comes to self-mockery or artful dissection of one's own sportsmen, the English are unparallelled; they've made eating their children a highly stylised parlour game. They excel at self-flagellation and deep contemplation on big themes such as what English tennis players (or soccer stars, or cricketers...) reveal about the national character. A tepid adjective is never used when a hyperbolic one will do. Losses aren't just disappointing - they're disastrous, mortifying, unconscionable!"
Sorry for the 'read-with-mother' routine, but I thought this paragraph summed it up. Even Welsh and Scottish sport-stars are valued by their fellow countrymen when they lose, without the fanfare and condemnation displayed by us English.
Why exactly do the public and press have this inherent belief that England should be the best at tennis, football, cricket? And why do we (yes, I have done it too) slag off our sporting heroes when they cannot win the biggest trophies?
Allow me to quote a passage from the sports biography 'The Rivals: Chris Evert versus Martina Navratilova'. The passage concerns seventies British tennis player John Lloyd, who was one in a very long line of British men vilified for not winning the Wimbledon Championships:
"When it comes to self-mockery or artful dissection of one's own sportsmen, the English are unparallelled; they've made eating their children a highly stylised parlour game. They excel at self-flagellation and deep contemplation on big themes such as what English tennis players (or soccer stars, or cricketers...) reveal about the national character. A tepid adjective is never used when a hyperbolic one will do. Losses aren't just disappointing - they're disastrous, mortifying, unconscionable!"
Sorry for the 'read-with-mother' routine, but I thought this paragraph summed it up. Even Welsh and Scottish sport-stars are valued by their fellow countrymen when they lose, without the fanfare and condemnation displayed by us English.
Why exactly do the public and press have this inherent belief that England should be the best at tennis, football, cricket? And why do we (yes, I have done it too) slag off our sporting heroes when they cannot win the biggest trophies?