Okay, so Andy Murray got beaten by a Russian. And Celtic got shunted out of Europe by some “Spaniards”. But we all know what the big Scottish sporting event is this week. It’s that time of year when we once again forget about sporting skill, sporting inevitability and sporting behaviour in the interest of putting one over our cousins from south of the border.
Your Scottish Rugby Blog correspondents will be fearlessly climbing the face of the North Stand on Saturday in order to witness what we’re all hoping will be at least a decent game, although the weather forecast is poorer than Scotland’s current form. But we don’t want to get down on our team (at least until afterwards), so we’ll cheer them on with no lack of full throatedness. If any of the rest of you are going to the game, I would ask a few things:
- Can we please keep cheering until at least the last five minutes? I know we don’t have good songs to sing (unlike the Welsh or the Irish) and our name doesn’t have enough syllables to be chanted by over-excited fans (Italians) so we sound like a bunch of tools shouting “Scot-land” really slowly, but at least make some noise. Otherwise the away fans will sing that song about Chariots and Jerusalem. Over and over.
- Let’s not boo the kickers. Unless it’s the Calcutta Cup on the line with two minutes to go. Then I’ll shut the hell up and let you get on with it.
- Let’s keep it clean. Its not the Battle of Gogarburn.
And with that I’ll get packing, and leave you with an extract from my esteemed colleague Al’s match preview from what seems like an eternity ago:
“This game will be the usual Scotland v England heavy match, blood, guts, thunder, no little passion and a good piss up afterwards.
Heart – Scotland win
Head – England win – we beat them the last time at Murrayfield so they’ll look to get revenge, plus its England and no side in the world is jammier!”
Since 1871 the record stands thus: Scotland 41, England 66 (they seem to like that number), Draws 17.
But let’s go with our hearts, eh?
3 Responses
42 – 66 after this weekends game!
Now, if thats also the score what a game we are in for!!!
We can do it, no doubt about it but the players need to believe… England aren’t Supermen, they don’t shoot lasers from their eye’s or crush cars with a wave of their pinky….they are normal folk, they feel pain when hit hard… they start to question their skills when a smaller man hits them, turns them and rips the ball from their hands… they feel the pressure when the ball tumbles out of the dark Murrayfield sky and three men in dark blue are bursting lungs to be there at the same time as the ball. Scotland need to harras, need to press the ball, hit low, hit hard and suck the life out of the English, don’t let them breath.
A lot is made of ‘warrior poet’ pish, and pish it is, but a Scotland side playing with passion, pride of the shirt, the heritage and what it means to represent your country, will get the full support of every man, women and child who make their way to Murrayfield on Saturday.
Onward Scotland….onwards to victory!
If anything the poor weather forecasted will favour us Scots tomorrow. I seem to remember the atrocious weather helping us deny the Auld Enemy a grand slam in 2000. If it means the Calcutta cup returning to stay north of the border I’m happy to have the wind and rain blowing in my face.
Hopefully everyone can get right behind the team and actually cheer and sing after the anthems. The cheering and singing was non-existent when the French came to town (brass bands & all), albeit there was little to cheer about. Regardless of the score let’s hope the support stay fired up and passionate throughout the whole match.
I’m always cautiously optimistic when the nations comes around, but the last few weekends of disappointment in the championship have left me wondering whether the team is actually going forward or just going in circles. After a good performance in the 2006 championship I wasn’t expecting us to get the wooden spoon in 2007. We have forgotten to how to score tries and are consistently relying on the boot of Mossy for points. I can’t help but think it might be time for a change…
Anyway let’s be optimistic sing loud and proud and hope tomorrow we can crash their sweet chariot and send them homeward tae think again.
See? They did it!!! YAY!!! :)