Would public apathy be a good thing for the England football team?

There was a lot of talk on Five Live last night about whether there is broadening sense of apathy toward the England football team from the general public.

While Wembley crowd numbers remain ridiculously strong, viewing figures for the Slovenia game were less than half of that for the Great British Bake Off the evening after, and it was was the same story with the figures for the Malta match versus The X Factor.

Paired with this was anecdotal evidence from texters to the radio show, saying they didn’t watch the Slovenia game, their little sons didn’t want to watch the game or ask for the score and so on. Thinking about it, I had the first half on while I was doing other things around the house, turned it off to read instead(!) and then watched the last quarter of an hour.

All of this seems to add up to a lower level of public interest. Putting this in to context though, about 5m people still watched the Slovenia game which is roughly a tenth of England’s population. And I can always recall there being a level of disconnect between England’s fans and its football team in the aftermath of disappointing major championship exits.

But this feels on another level – losing to Iceland rather than a Portugal or Germany at a major championship, the Sam Allardyce fiasco and seemingly never-ending listless performances all contributing.

Ignorant booing and social media abuse of Wayne Rooney aside, the passion seems dimmed.

However, is this truly a bad thing?

Many reasons have been put forward for England’s underachievement at international level – indulged players, lack of English footballers in the Premier League, those English players in the Premier League being made to look good by their foreign counterparts, managers aren’t good enough, tactically inflexible, youth systems aren’t producing and so on and on and on and on.

Another theory is the amount of pressure and expectation on England to not only win but also win playing in an attractive manner, especially against ‘smaller’ footballing nations. This comes from both the media and the public, especially with the all-consuming power of social media, with where it all starts rather unclear (though I suspect it is more social media-led now).

It appears to be self-perpetuating as the longer England go without winning a major tournament, the greater the burden – 30 years of hurt has quickly become 50. Nowhere could this been seen more than that night in Nice when English players seemed incapable of passing the ball 10 yards without it winding up at the feet of an Icelander.

But what if continued and enhanced public apathy towards the England national football team gradually reduces the pressure to the extent players do not wilt when wearing the England shirt? What if they feel unshackled and can play their natural games?

There was an element of this in the Euro 2016 qualifying campaign under Roy Hodgson where wins were picked like ripe fruit and no-one really had much expectation for the most part (partly due to Hodgson playing everything down).

Right up until the moment England won 3-2 away in Germany and the weight of expectation returned.

 But maybe, just maybe, extreme levels of apathy might just be crazy enough to work.

Wading in on #indref

One rung above the thing Scottish people may well loath most (public-school-educated, southern English politicians telling them which way to vote next Thursday) is any old English person telling them which way to vote next Thursday - 'aye' or 'ach no' to use a lazy, but invitingly easy, stereotype.
So, on we go, two penny-worth time.
There are countless things I'd miss about Scotland if it were to secede- a third colour which brightens up the Unions flag, charity challengers getting an easier ride by walking from Marshall Meadows to Land's End rather than John O'Groats and Twin Atlantic to name three.
But what I think I would dislike the most is having our clearly defined geographic landmass cut into two, separate pieces - much like across the Irish Sea though that was kind of the fault of we English anyway... like in Palestine...and much of Africa....and India and Pakistan....
Anyway, I've never been to Scotland and for all I know there could be a modern day Hadrian's Wall at the border complete with barbed wire, spotlights, sniper lasers and innumerable boxes of clinical, latex gloves to check people aren't smuggling Tennent's Super Strong Lager, heroin and the Daily Record.
But the idea that this landmass is split into two formally different countries feels me with a sadness I just can't quite understand, nor rationalise. It feels like my right arm - a pretty key part I'm sure you'll agree- suddenly deciding it doesn't want to be controlled by me anymore but has the distinct disadvantage of not being able to physically escape short of cutting itself off.
Perhaps a massive canal being built from coast-to-coast might be the solution should the 'ayes' have it next week so Scotland can drift off to shack up with Iceland in one of the most bizarre partnerships imaginable - Bjork meets Rod Stewart or Lazytown creator Magnis Scheving writing a show for James McAvoy.
However, despite the perceived support for the Union in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, we should not be allowed to have a say in the argument - it is the Scots' right to have their say on self-determination and if they say 'aye', what right do we have to hold them back like an older brother snatching back a stolen toy from a younger sibling? "Here you go...just kidding."
But if the Scottish were to vote for independence, there is a huge knock-on impact for the English identity. Being English is a concept I struggle with as apart from placing overwhelming, cloying and ultimately destructive faith in our sporting teams, what separates being English from being British?
If Scotland were to sod off, what we would be? The Dis-United Kingdom? Good Britain? Three loosely-associated countries, two of which probably have more in common with Scotland than they do England? Come to think of it, who would get custody of Wales?! Won't somebody please think of the Welsh.
An 'aye' may well be the springboard for Scottish pride and a reforming of the Scottish identity but an identity crisis would be left for the English - a cynic would suggest that might be a good campaigning tool for amateur Andrew Lloyd Webber lookalike Alec Salmond.
So whatever way you vote on Thursday Scotland, do it for the positive reasons and not the negative.
But if you do go, please take Gillian McKeith with you. Cheers.

Big Men In Little Shorts - the Six Nations and I

You know the feeling when something sounds really important - like the annexation of Crimea or what that woman from The Only Way is Essex wore to dinner last night - but you just cannot seem to give it the same amount of interest as say, freeing the sock fluff from in between your toes?
That is basically how I feel about Big Men In Little Shorts From Half A Dozen Countries Pushing Each Other While Being Terribly Polite About The Whole Thing - or to give it its official name, the RBS Six Nations.
I get that it's important in the world of rugby and usually I'm unthinking enough to buy into jingoism and Scot-bashing played out on grass in most other sports but...just...something...there is something about it that means I end up writing a blog that will be read by eight people at most while the tournament culminates.
It's the sporting equivalent of not watching Borgen or not listening to Yeezus by Kanye West - it probably is worth my time, but that doesn't mean I will.
Then again, I polished off Breaking Bad in the last six weeks, just started watching House of Cards and read all of the so-far-published A Song of Ice and Fire books in about four months so I'm just as mindless and sheep-like enough to follow the tempting, tempting crowd with their offers of social acceptance in those fields anyway.
Just for some reason, the sport really, really does not draw me in. Do you know where I was when England got to the World Cup Final in 2003 and 2007 - in a branch of Argos and at a dog-racing evening respectively which about sums it all up.
I'd watch golf in the form of the Ryder Cup over either code of rugby which I don't like typing, but that is simply the way it is.
All in all, it must be pretty much the same feeling that people who are ambivalent to the omnipresent, all-consuming monster that is football feel for the rest of the 45-odd weeks of the year - enduring the never-ending questions of "Did you watch the game?", "Did you see X fuck up?", "I hate Y so much; how about you?" and so on and so forth.
No I didn't watch it, can we talk about something else? Nope, thought not. I'll go back to de-fluffing my littlest toe.