DH is asking for the power of mumsnet.....

[FlameBoo]

He has a Japanese email buddy who has asked him:

Why are we "Great Britain" for the olympics, but England, Scotland and Wales for the World Cup???

Neither of us have a clue

Oh, and while I'm at it - where do the England squad train???

Maybe and only a guess that great britian covers all of it/us but as we are different parts they get to play as different places.

It seems like we change the rules depending on the contest!

Football is different for a couple of reasons, iirc: as seperate nations, we each get a vote in international football matters and so we kindof have a bit more say and fans couldn't stomach a mixed team. The first ever international was Eng v. Scotland and there's such a history between the nations wrt football that we really wouldn't want to see that rivalry watered down.
Something like that anyway.

Probably have to be Great Britain for Olympics as athletics isn't promoted enough and the individual countries would probably be really short of contestants.
Unlike the tedously overwhelming culture of football in this country.

we also revert to eng/wal/scot etc for Commonwealth Games, which is great imo

Probably because when the Modern Olympic Movement was started, we competed as GB. All of the other competitions have started later and the individual companies have competed.

I believe that we can't compete at Olympic football because we compete as separate teams normally.

cos we can - right. we conquored almost everywhere and we can do what we want

Because we invented football so it's played by our rules, whereas the modern olympics were more of an international thingy?

because England, scotland and wales all have their own football associations and seperate leagues.

I saw the England coach the day they left the UK. They had been at 'The Grove' in Watford. They didn't train there full time though.