English Crap At Sports: Official

Observatory
27th June 2010

Three blokes trying to kick a ball

It’s eerily quiet on the streets tonight – no cheering, no vuvuzelas, just a strange empty silence. That’ll be the sound of England being crap at sports again, then. It’s not even a remorseful silence, because nobody really cares. We’re never surprised when we slam out of the World Cup or fail at the quarter finals in tennis. Because no matter who manages us, we’re always, always utter rubbish.

Wayne Rooney, the footballing person who looks like a sausage, isn’t exactly someone a kid would want to stick on his bedroom wall. I seem to recall we were good at darts, snooker and other sports you can play with a pint glass in one hand, but that’s about it. At least the world’s most annoying women, the WAGs, will go away now.

Let’s concentrate on the things that we’re good at;

Singing
Having naff Celtic tattoos
Teen pregnancy
Students taking Media Studies because they can’t think of anything else to do
Having a wee in the street after chucking out time
Er, that’s it.
Welcome to 2010 – the new 1974.

11 comments on “English Crap At Sports: Official”

  1. Alan says:
    June 27, 2010 at 11:10 pm

    Not being even remotely interested I went for a wander around town during the match. I knew things were not going well by the “relative” silence from the pubs I passed. No roars, no chants, no horns – just this rather nasty taste of desperation.

    It reminded me of last weeks England match. We’d finished early so everybody could pile down to the pub to see England play. I decided to walk home. 20 minutes into the game and a total power failure in Twickenham – so funny to see all the fans dashing pub to pub, shop to shop, gathering around mobile ‘phone screens, car radios mobbed… Really wanted to smirk – fortunately was able to control myself.

  2. Alan Morgan says:
    June 27, 2010 at 11:38 pm

    We’re good at cricket at the moment. Otherwise we need someone to write a given team a note from their Mum excusing them the early rounds.

  3. Jen says:
    June 28, 2010 at 2:44 am

    The not so well publicised England women’s football team seems to be doing quite well in the world cup qualifiers. 6-0 in the last match against Malta.. 🙂

  4. Jen says:
    June 28, 2010 at 2:52 am

    Ooh, and not to forget, our women’s cricket team won the cricket world cup last year!

  5. Helen Martin says:
    June 28, 2010 at 12:53 pm

    We’ll see how they do against the Canadian women’s team (football, not cricket). Most of the men’s teams I could have cheered for from an ancestral point of view: England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany or Denmark, United States and, of course, Canada, are not doing particularly well, but I thought someone yesterday had a cheery thought. He is cheering for Ghana. That comes under the category of “wait until the underdog is determined, then cheer for him/her.”

  6. BangBang!! says:
    June 28, 2010 at 1:16 pm

    I must be one of the few who enjoy the 4 yearlys – World Cup, Olympics, Commonwealth etc. Maybe because I’m English/Irish I have 3 sides I can cheer for though I’m mainly an England man. I don’t go in for the chav flags out the window or on the car but I do like to think I can join a couple of billion other people in enjoying a few matches.

    But maybe a few more could join me in supporting my second team in the tournament –

    GANBATTE NIHON!!!

  7. Anne Hill Fernie says:
    June 29, 2010 at 5:56 am

    I can’t think of anything sadder than the ranks of drooping St.George’s flags wilting in the rain 2 days after the defeat here in Manchester………

  8. Helen Martin says:
    June 29, 2010 at 11:10 am

    I can imagine, Anne, and our paper today gives an interview with the English manager, “Our players were tired.” That’s it? tired? Apparently we’ll hear about his future in two weeks time. Come on, get it together, guys.

  9. I.A.M. says:
    June 29, 2010 at 9:05 pm

    I’ve heard that the coach of the English team was an absolute fiend about the players’ diets, and banned all condiments from the meal table. Not only did all the team have to eat together (all meals, all as a group, without exception; a bit odd for a group of adults, really), if anyone placed so much as one bottle of brown sauce on the table the coach scooped it up and it was never seen again.

    Now, while one admits that the typical “traditional British diet” is quite fatty (developed when everyone was working 18 physical hours a day, when you’d need that caloric intake), surely even a bit of sauce could be burned off with a few extra laps around the field?

    It’s possible that the guys were ‘tired’ due to the coach not letting them have any fun!

  10. Helen Martin says:
    July 3, 2010 at 4:41 pm

    The score for coaches is not all that great this year. The French – well, nuff said – the English – tired – and did you see Maradona during the Argentina/Germany game today? I agree with those who say the better the player, the worse coach he makes, and Maradona was pretty good. (I believe in understatement.)Reduced to using his son-in-law on the team, or did he search out a potentially great player and tell his daughter to marry him?

  11. Derwyn says:
    July 8, 2010 at 10:09 pm

    paul is absolutely the freshest new oracle

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