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It’s 9:30pm on the 11^th July 2018 and I’m sat in my living room after England have just gone out of the World Cup at the semi-final stage.

I’m sat with my son who’s 10 (that’s important for later on) and Louis Dunne who is 15.

Firstly, some background. It’s difficult for a Scotsman who lives in England to support the England football team, it’s impossible for a Scotsman who lives in Scotland to do so.

The enmity (hatred) of the Scots towards the English is an old wives’ tale. It is a cultural meme which is passed down from father to son, from Grandmother to Grandchild and it’s rooted in historical context called the Highland Clearances. 

It goes a long way back and it’s now expressed in football.

I understand this only too well because I was privileged enough to be able to represent my country 13 times as a teenager, 3 times as Captain, and less privileged to miss a potential game winning shot in the last two seconds of my first international against Ireland in Dundee in 1985. Don’t worry Gareth, I know what it feels like, even if it is at a lower level!

I played against England three times, once as Captain and never won but developed a fierce and partisan patriotism having been brought up as a Scotland football supporter (my Dad was a Rangers supporter and I went to a Catholic – Celtic school so he wouldn’t let me get involved with the Old Firm)

I arrived in England in 1995 still very much in the mould that most of Scotland still assumes which is ‘I support anyone who is playing against England’.

Two things changed this.

1. In Euro 1996 Scotland were in the same group as England. We were also in a group with Holland and Switzerland. In the final group games, having lost to England at Wembley, Scotland needed to beat Switzerland and England needed to beat Holland and there needed to be a four-goal swing. With ten minutes to go England were 3 – 0 up and Scotland were 1 – 0 up and I was amazed at how excited the English fans around me in the Irish bar in Nottingham were at the prospect we were both heading through.

I still remember that now and I can taste my confusion. This is the enemy, why are they supporting us?

In the end, and typically for Scotland, Holland scored one against England and out we went but it shook my foundations. This empathy, camaraderie, this ‘we’ll support Scotland as long as they’re not playing against us’ thing.

2. Then came ‘Trainspotting’, the movie, and the scene where they take the train to the Moors and Renton explains why he doesn’t hate the English because they’re just w*&$£rs but we’re stupid because we allowed ourselves to be colonised by w*&$£rs.

And then the penny dropped. So here it is…

The Scots hate the English but the English don’t hate the Scots because they’re insignificant, the English hate the Germans. The Germans don’t hate the English because they’re insignificant, they hate the Dutch. The Dutch don’t hate the Germans, they hate the Belgians and as far as I can see the Belgians don’t hate anybody. So, the merry-go-round continues.

 So back to the living room on the 11^th July and the disappointment for all three of us because ‘our team’ had gone out of the World Cup.

For some reason the cultural meme had passed on to my son who wears a Scotland strip to his football training and takes the abuse that some of the other boys, and even some of the other dads, will give him because he’s chosen to support the team his father supports. But this World Cup I wasn’t having any of that and leading by example we decided to support England.

So the disappointment in my living room was palpable when everybody realised that it wasn’t actually ‘coming home’.

But something else came home through this World Cup, something much more important I think, than getting to the final.

As difficult as it is to support England and to be a ‘traitor’ I am still very objective in watching them through major championships and watching the behaviour of the fans, the pundits, the players and the management and it’s fascinating. Of course, the difference in this World Cup was leadership.

England didn’t have a criminal as their manager this time or a misogynistic foreigner or an autistic foreigner. They had somebody who had played for England in a semi-final and had committed the ‘ultimate crime’ and sent the country into despair for years. He dusted himself off, learned from his difficult situation and became a better man to lead a group to achieve more than they deserved and more than the sum of their parts could have reasonably been expected to do.

I suppose Gareth Southgate brought tactical knowledge and technical knowledge, a team of coaches, a vision, a style of leadership and communication which may not have been around for a long time, if ever. But from where I sat he brought something much more important which filtered through the players and then the fans and then the pundits and then the public.

Humility.

When you’re trying not to support England from a distance as the majority of Scotland usually does, it’s easy to do that because they have a sense of entitlement and arrogance on entering major championships, which is so hard to believe based on their mediocre record for the past 52 years, but not this time.

If I heard Gareth Southgate say the word ‘humility’ once, I heard it 100 times and he wasn’t paying lip service, he meant it.

Somebody who has been at the depths that man has been in his professional sporting career understands humility and understands the importance. Just for a short while he instilled it in his players and instilled it in the country.

I was sad to read today that England fans have been investigated for racial chants in the semi-final – perhaps they got carried away and lost a bit of humility – but if Southgate can continue to instil that into this group of young players, the sky is the limit. Technical skills in football at that level are a given but attitude is everything.

It was a pleasure to watch England progress through this World Cup and an experience that my son and I will never forget. We’re still going to the next major Championship that Scotland ever qualify for provided I’m still alive, but Callum and I will take that lesson in humility that we learned from Gareth Southgate through our respective journeys going forwards.

Blog Post Number: 1718