8 Captains Blog

This week has been all about Capello and his less than English England team. This made me think what is Englishness and what exactly have we lost.

I had a little look back to 2007 when we found ourselves staring at our televisions at a supposedly very English England team as they trudged off the wet Wembley turf and into the record books as the most embarrassing England team ever, lead of course by an Englishman who was very very English (despite his very Scottish Ginger hair and red face).

Whilst looking back I came across an article written by another very very English Englishman Jeremy Clarkson and his take on what happened that night. The article in the Times was headlined “We’ve Been Robbed of Our Englishness” (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article2935442.ece). The article whilst not directly linked to football was inspired by the lack of passion, organisation and most importantly lack of pride that was shown that night during the national anthem.

Fast forward to the present day and we are still being told we have lost our Englishness, but after watching the game on Wednesday night I get the feeling we may have re-discovered it and if anything showed more Englishness than we have in a long time, and it has taken an Italian task master to bring our England team back to something resembling a quality team again.

This brings me on to our very own Girton United and how in someway we can be compared to England. Take a look at the comparisons.

Five years ago England were under the management of Sven and boasted plenty of talent but had little direction and ultimately failed to live up to any expectation.

Girton whilst maybe not expected to reach the dizzy heights of Sven’s millionaires were also under management that offered little direction. I don’t want to mention the name but you would be made to stand to attention by this sergeant, do sprint drills even before the warm up and walk out of the changing room on match day discussing ways in which you could avoid doing anything that was discussed during the pre-match team talk.

Fast forward five years and like England, Girton now have direction and purpose, it has in truth been in place a bit longer at Girton but the point is both sides know exactly what they need to do each game and most importantly each and every player believes in the football philosophy that is instilled into the club by the managers, and like England, Girton’s style is very English, pass and move and when possession is lost work your bollocks off to win it back. We laugh at the 70ft white sheets of paper in the changing room before a game that are full of long words that many don’t understand, but we all agree with those words and when put into practice, like it was last weekend the results, like England’s on Wednesday night are devastating.