On the morning of Andy Murray's date with destiny (or the latest one) it's hard not to be impressed by the Mirror's unashamed desperation in its attempts to recast Andy Murray not merely as a True Brit, but as one of Merrie England's very own sons! In an article entitled 'Flower of England', the paper explains -
"Andy Murray may support "anyone but England" in the football but new research reveals his roots lie south of the border.
As the Scots tennis ace powered into the Wimbledon semi-final, genealogy experts traced his roots to England.
Website TheGenealogist.co.uk has discovered Andy's maternal grandmother was born to English parents from York and Berwick-upon-Tweed."
Hmmm. Would that, by any chance, be the same English granny that Murray has repeatedly said he is so fond of, and referred to at length in a newspaper article to try to defuse the synthetic outrage over "anyone but England" when the likes of the Mirror first started to witter on about it? What astonishing discoveries will this crack team of historical investigators turn up next - that there was a wee bit of a stooshie in Europe between the years 1939 and 1945?
The other obvious question is how the Mirror will react when Nadal extinguishes Murray's dream later today (pessimism keeps me sane). Will they reveal that further research has been urgently carried out, and it transpires that three of Murray's grandparents are, in fact, not English?
With my cynicism levels running off the scale, apologies for the following banter.
ReplyDeleteBeing from Berwick upon tweed is a borderline decision anyway as to whether one is scottish or english.
The burghers should be given the option to decide. I think they would choose scotland for the health support they get in later life, but they may be happy under the yolk of faraway London imperialism........
This is typical, trying to find someone with a slight lineage from England and in this case it was a granny.
But why bother, is it to say it is ok to support him at least a bit even if he is not "proper" English like Henman?
As someone who is a mongrel with french, Irish, English and scottish blood, and a good mix of protestants and catholics, presbyterian and free church, I think the fact the nmirror bothered to check this out so they could claim him as English let alone British is spurious.
Murray should walk on with a big Scottish flag, and even if he lives in England to train (which I did when I was younger as well when involved in athletics) he should be proud of his family and his heritage.
Time for those Wimbledonites to fly a Scottish flag if they want to show some solidarity!
We can only hope the Mirror finds that perhaps Capello had a maternal grandmother from London?
Redcliffe, the irony is that Murray (much as it might grate on me) has always been perfectly comfortable with being both "Scottish'n'British", so the English media's extreme touchiness over his lighthearted comment about football a few years ago says an awful lot about them, and nothing about him.
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