Dog Collars and Rabbit Corpses

Its only a game!

Is often the accusation levelled against football. Now there are lots of reasons I would wish to argue against this, however, I intend only to focus on one.

The area of Manchester in which I live is a large multi-cultural suburb about 2 miles from the city centre. It comprises mainly of a white British and Asian or Afro Caribbean population. On the whole these communities live happily alongside one another with very little problems. Having worked in Burnley for seven years this is in stark contrast to the communities living in places such as that where both communities are distinct from one another.

However I do wonder whether at times by the nature that these Asian communities have such a well defined cultural identity and close communal links whether the white community living alongside do at times question there commitment to the neighbourhood and perhaps the country.

I observed with interest recently the governments suggestion that a Britishness(made up word) test should be introduced, I’m not sure I’d pass or at least what should be included. Perhaps questions like what is a Britain’s favourite food, mmmm apparently that is now Chicken Tikka so perhaps that wouldn’t work. Anyway back to the football.

My point is this (I do have one) that during the world cup the cultural, social and to some extent community divide has been smashed down. Asian’s have been flying the English flag from their cars and house’s. The Asian petrol shop assistance spoke passionately about Gerrard’s sweet touch on the ball and suddenly the differences disappear. Shame we couldn’t win it!

I recentley went to listen to Billy Bragg who said it was time we claimed back the English flag from the Nationalistic agenda whether or not football will achieve this i'm not sure or naive enough to suggest it solves all our problems. Still perhaps this is the beginning of a realisation (even if it only last 4 weeks) that we are not so different after all. Similar things make us tick, what we need to do is spend the time discovering what they are!

posted by Stuart @ Wednesday, July 05, 2006