how are the leaves up there?

Today was the men's final at Wimbledon. Andy Murray was not playing. The papers, my friends, my family and the nation as a whole seemed to think that this was sad. Well, it is sad because it was something important to him but it is no more sad than if he had knocked out Rafael Nadal, his semi-final opponent.

Supporting the sports team near you or your own country has always been a bit of an odd idea to me. I know these people no better than i know the people playing in Wolverhampton or Ipswich or those lovely looking gentlemen from Uruguay. When people are younger, excluding those who follow their parents' choice, they are generally attracted to teams who do well or teams who play in shirts that are their favourite colour (no wonder red and blue teams abound in the Premiership - they even reap the rewards of table-football, the cheek!). This seems like a far more reasonable decision than choosing your local club. That is unless you plan on going to see them play, but even then i think i would find it difficult to feel passionately about anything just because it was convenient. That sort of attitude would lead to lots of tree-climbing for me, "Fancy going to the pub tonight?" "Why would we do that when we have all these trees to climb just outside?" the conversation would go, and if we follow this ad absurdium, and why wouldn't we, to eating the leaves as it was just impractical to climb all the way down the tree, traipse across the road, open the front door and make a sandwich. Returning to the real world, why wouldn't you choose a team who's style of play you particularly enjoyed or who played in that certain shade of turquoise that you treasure above all other colours? When you see fans at matches one of the words that springs to mind to describe them - along with heavily inebriated and raucously loud - is passionate, and if i'm going to get passionate about something it's going to be something i enjoy not something that the only thing i have in common with it is where i happen to have been born and reside.

A film i would strongly recommend is a German film called, Die Welle. There is a scene in the film where they are discussing nationalism and a girl says, "all those people waving flags, it's disgusting" which is instantly countered by a boy claiming, "if we don't, who will?" Now i am very much of the opinion posited by graffiti artist Banksy that, "people who enjoy waving flags don't deserve to have one". The same jokes come out year on year that there is a new system designed by the NHS for gauging how crazy people are: people with no flags on their car are sane; people with one are a little odd; people with two are just about approachable; three flags means handle with care; and four flags suggests you should keep your distance if you can. This anti-flag position does not seem to go hand-in-hand with anti-nationalism though. People who wield flags in favour of their team just baffle me, patriotism i can sort of understand but flags are only really at home on ships or castles.

But the boy has a point, doesn't he? These lovely (questionable adjective but let's be friendly) people have dedicated their lives to sport and if that is something we enjoy watching then they should surely receive our support. Well, yes, someone should but i still have no greater link with these people than that we come from the same country, not something which i had a large choice about in the first place. 

By all means feel free to support your local club and cheer for your country; i think i'll stick to supporting those who i feel a link with, wherever they are from. I guess i just prefer to like types of people who embody amiable characteristics than blindly following whoever it is that turns out under a certain flag.