Living down south has its advantages. I was married here, my son was born here, and we have actual summers. There are also far less supporters of ‘the’ Rangers than you have to put up with up the road. I rarely regret moving over the border if the truth be told, it’s worked out well in the main…
One thing that has never abated however is the complete disregard that’s shown to football north of the border. Tin Pot and Mickey Mouse are some of the more printable descriptions they use to describe Scottish football.
I’m regularly told Celtic’s domination of Scottish football means nothing
Normally these comments come from ignorance and it must be said are easily ignored, though a frustration remains. I don’t expect them to follow or watch Scottish football. I’m regularly told Celtic’s domination of Scottish football means nothing as the league is poor and of course ‘the’ Rangers aren’t what they were. You can point out they aren’t even Rangers anymore but they don’t really get it all if the truth be told.
I’ll be clear this is not true of every English football fan, some are very knowledgeable and respectful of the history of Celtic and Scottish football, sadly they are in the minority.
If you lose to Livingston you soon hear about it, if you put six past Ross County, it’s a shrug of the shoulders. Though funnily enough if you ask which Scottish game they watched that week or that season even, chances they haven’t watched Scottish football since Gascoigne or Larsson played and even then four times a year maximum for what was the ‘old firm’ games.
Many don’t even watch the Glasgow Derby now, but they still have an opinion on the standard of our game. Yet ask them to name two players outside of Celtic or ‘the’ Rangers and they are stumped.
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Good article; I lived in London for 7 years then a couple in Gloucestershire before coming back up the road. I did enjoy life down south and at one point, couldn’t imagine moving back but now I’ve been back 13 years…..I’ll not prattle on about the changes I see when visiting London but I enjoy being near the sea and mountains here. As for fans, some of the Celtic supporter bars were as rowdy in London as up here but like you say, not many sevco fans down south!
I also used to become frustrated at the ignorance towards Scottish football. It was almost an embarrassed afterthought for someone to even be partly praising but mostly it was ‘rubbish league’, ‘farmer’s league’, ‘but it’s not like you have any competition’ etc.
My throwback was ‘Okay, before 1993, was the English league comparable to Italy or Spain?’ Or I’d say ‘Okay, take the 4bn Sky and ITV paid for the premiership. What players could you afford, how would you compete with the European elite’? There was never a definitive answer, because money is the biggest separator. How much did we get for winning the league vs how much did we get for progress in Europe. Money has changed football. I still enjoy watching it but sometimes get more out of lower league games or watching other sports. With Sportscene, I’ll watch our highlights but often skip the rest because, I mean no disrespect to our league but yes, you do see a higher calibre of player down south. But it is all driven by money. And that is the real shame in it all. Look at the premiership, it is dominating even European competitions and as all the big teams are invested in keeping money to themselves, it will just continue. A spending cap would make sense but as that’s unlikely to happen, we just have to keep putting teams from the Premiership in their place. There’s no point explaining it to an ignoramus who doesn’t understand our club or environment up here. But I think we’ll see the apoplectic, perplexed, gazumped, bewildered and complaining start when England fail once again to win a major tournament next year (there is no way they’ll get past Spain, France, Argentina or Brazil, although Brazil aren’t looking too clever either). We will still be in Europe and qualifying for tournaments that some of the farmer’s league utterances could only dream of seeing their team compete in.