to think that if you're in Team GB you should sing the national anthem

[ClaireFromWork]

Ddail Mail I'm afraid but honestly, if you're in a team that represents the United Kingdom then surely you should be prepared to sing it. Esp if you're captain of the team.

linky

I only know the first verse of the national anthem I dont feel anyless Brittish and i don't think i need to be marched to the tower for treason

For goodness sake, can't they just mumble along with the rest of us so that the media can concentrate on the actual sporty bits?

LRD - if I'm entirely structly honest I think I'd prefer the Charlotte Church and the Magdalene college choir option. The mental image has already given me much pleasure...

I don't know the words either, but that just made me smile.

I just googled the words to Flower of Scotland to check if I knew them and I knew all the first and last verse, but was patchy on the middle one...wondering if it is normally missed out?!

Fooyball365's take on the issue today

GB OUT OF TUNE! IT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE TO ANYTHING!

GB OUT OF TUNE
Of all the astounding, steaming mounds of bullsh*t that some sections of the press shovel through our letterboxes every day, there are few things that irritate Mediawatch more than any sort of 'furore' over whether or not someone sang the national anthem.

So one can always rely on The Daily Mail. Their back page - back f**king page - headline belches 'GB OUT OF TUNE.'

'Stars snub the Anthem, then let victory slip,' says the sub-header, before the intro continues:

'Ryan Giggs and Craig Bellamy refused to join in the National Anthem before Great Britain gave away a late equaliser in their opening Olympic game last night.'

The paper goes on to quote a few outraged people on Twitter to justify their story, which is hardly a rock-solid source since the only place easier to find outrage than Twitter is...well...The Daily Mail.

So why? Why bother devoting the back page of a newspaper to something that matters not a single iota? It has no impact on the performances of the athletes - as you'll recall, every England player quite pointedly sang God Save The Queen with gusto at Euro 2012, and look how far it got them. We'd wager Great Britain & Northern Ireland's rather limp performance was more down to a combination of Senegal's rough-housing and Stuart Pearce's insistence on playing three left-backs.

And neither does it imply a lack of patriotism, or a lack of commitment to the event they're participating in. That these players are there, potentially disrupting their club season for no reason other than to represent Great Britain and play in the Olympics. What if they simply do not really wish to save the Queen?

Incidentally, Daley Thompson, who famously whistled the National Anthem in 1984, is given a double-page spread in the Mail this morning.

Did tem GB lose the football ? just wondering if the DM is maybe trying to deflect

casey - now I think of it properly, me too. Especially together.

"Both George and his Feckie,
Ever so, Amen."

What is George's 'Feckie' please? Stop my mind boggling.

Perhaps they should have created a special UK anthem for the event.

It's not "Team Elizabeth II", it's Team GB! If you ask me the queen can fuck off.

Agree. Take the job - work with the conditions.

But it's not a condition of the job.
Also if they're called up they're obliged to play because it's a FIFA sanctioned tournament.
Also there's not much financial Reward for representing a team people care so little about

Yes it is. I'm in the British team
Sing the song you bloody nobs

"I don't believe in god. " as a reason for not singing FFs. Do you not say bless you " when someone sneezes ?

But the job does not have any sort of requirement to sing the national anthem, you are inventing that requirement, it's not there, they are selected for their sporting ability nothing else. You may want their to be nationalistic overtones and there are in the whole event, but none of the sports selection criteria mention it. They are doing their jobs, nationalist icons are not part of it.

No matter how much you say there's a requirement to sing there simply is not.
And it's not a job either.
The condition is to show up and perform your best.
Many athletes don't sing because it disrupts their focus or precompetition routine.
Why would you want to impose some jingoistic bullshit on an athlete it is going to mess with their routine?
Are you really going to feel better if giggs mumbled along paying lip service?

How is it "jingoistic bullshit"?

The idea that an adult deciding not to sing the anthem is anyone else's business or has anything to do with their role as an athlete or speaks to their pride or commitment is, to my mind, jingoistic bullshit.
They're there to perform to the best of their abilities, whether they song the anthem or not is irrelevant and the people complaining just seem to be looking for something to complain about or impose what their notion of national pride is on others.

They do take the job and work with the conditions. There isn't a condition that they have to sing the national anthem. What you mean is "Take the job and wirk with the imaginary conditions that I personally would put in place if I were ruler of the Universe", which is plainly bollocks.

Quite honestly, who cares if they sing it or not? YABU

YABU. I can't bloody stand the national anthem, it's such a dirge, and very outdated. And you might feel a divvy singing in front of 1 billion people, or too choked up and proud, or want to stand in respectful silence. Plenty of valid reasons for not doing so anyway.

Claire you think her issue is unimportant, whereas Smith & Carlos' was important - that's your opinion, not an impartial assessment. If Little and/or Giggs not singing is political, then so is singing it - but singing is the usual, accepted, taken for granted, dominant view; not singing is the minority view. Don't we defend minority views?

Just stopping by to see aLl the vitriol being shown towards Bradley wiggins for his muteness on the podium .......

Yabu.
You don't have a choice but to compete as part of a country. You could just be competing because you love the sport you are good at! But because you come from a country you have no other way to compete but to be part of that country's team. Some people could politically disagree with a way a country is run so not want to 'support' them but still personally want to compete at the highest level in the sport they love.

The problem is Scotland and wales are countries in their own right, they just happen to be ruled by England. And the "national" anthem is pretty much the English anthem, it's just that the welsh were conquered and the scots were sold.

It's kind of like saying that all European athletes should sing the European anthem rather than their individual country's.