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So Rooney is now a doubt for the world cup squad. Oh joy. Like the English football fan needs anything more to stress and worry about.

Now I’m not normally an active football fan. I do enjoy the sport, and the big games, I just don’t actively follow a particular team, in either the Scottish or English leagues. I simply can’t get passionate about one arbitrary group of professional players over another. But I do keep an eye on the scores, controversies, league positions and so on, so that I can at least hold my own in a conversation with friends. But when it comes to the world cup, or any other international tournament, I’m enthusiastic about England.

Living in Scotland, of course, makes going down the pub to watch the big matches a bit less of a easy thing to do (especially as I do get quite vocal!). The Scots, with the historical (and current) disagreements with England, generally side on “anybody who isn’t England”, which is in my view all rather disingenuous, and perhaps even a little spiteful or vindictive. I’m all for good-natured joshing and piss-taking, but when your own team doesn’t qualify, it’s all a bit sour-grapes to cheer on the opposition, given we are at a national level, the same country with more to unite us than divide us. Actually, I’m sure plenty of Scots would actively support England if there wasn’t quite the group-think and bruhaha around it in friendly company, and us English a bit less forgetful about our national setup!

But as for Rooney’s injury, these damned metatarsals have a lot to answer for, especially those in the feet of our talisman players, whether Beckham, Owen or Rooney. But it’s something I think the England fan is painfully used to. We need to remember that winning major tournaments is not supposed to be easy, and we need - and have - more than just the one world-class player in the squad.

Hopefully Rooney, and Owen, will still make it in time for the final rounds, and I’m sure we all wish them all the very best for a speedy recovery. Perhaps the same goes for a few Scots too!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 30th, 2006 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Football, Media, Scotland, Sport, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.