It’s been many years since I watched the once unmissable Sports Personality of the Year programme on the BBC, largely because it has become a deeply unserious piece of broadcasting. But it was hard to escape the cringe-inducing clip on social media recently with comedian Iain Stirling running the full gamut of Caledonian stereotypes by way of marking Scotland’s return to the World Cup finals for the first time in 28 years.
A false portrayal
I don’t think it was deliberately offensive, but it was crap. It wasn’t very funny, but it was really lazy and deeply embarrassing. It rolled out some old tropes – defeats to less fancied nations, glorying in English misfortune – when in fact the new generation of Scots don’t remember the former and aren’t really into the latter. I mean, I’ve yet to meet a Scotland fan who mentioned Frank Lampard’s disallowed goal against Germany – which Stirling referenced as an example of our supposed schadenfreude towards the England team’s misfortunes.
But I think what most gar’d me greet about the whole thing was that the guy was trying, in vain, to get a laugh by portraying a Scotland that no longer exists, in the aftermath of what was, without any shadow of doubt, the greatest moment in Scotland’s football history.
A team with a new sense of unity
For all the talk of a divided Scotland, for me the current squad represent a wider unity and togetherness that perhaps wasn’t there before. The dwindling influence of the Glasgow giants of Celtic and Rangers, in both the sporting and cultural senses, means a less rancorous dressing room. Some of the team’s key figures play for Dynamo Zagreb, Bologna, and Torino. The indomitable Scott McTominay, of Napoli, is officially the best midfielder in Italy and, by being a key figure in their title winning squad. Perhaps, he’s the city’s most popular figure since the great Diego Maradona.
New form of identity amongst fans
And just as the team has moved on, so have the fans. There’s a myth the footballing disaster that was Argentina 1978, somehow cost us devolution in the vote the following year. But the political and constitutional picture was very different back then. Despite the enormous outpouring of national pride from the hundred thousand Scots for whom a pilgrimage to Wembley was a rite of passage, the truth is that by 1979, the SNP had two MPs, having had 11 the year before. Nobody really considered independence a serious discussion.
But now? You’d need to in your fifties to remember the humiliations against Peru and Iran. My football daft sons were born six and eight years after the loss to Morocco at France ‘98. They don’t consider themselves in the slightest bit British, and they don’t concern themselves with historical failure. You might as well ask them for their memories of the industrial revolution as for their memories, good or bad, of Scotland at a World Cup. Even the fabled boozing and Jimmy hats is, for them, harmlessly performative.
Independence is a natural presumption
Also, and this is critical I think, they have never known a Scotland that didn’t have at least a degree of self-government, and never not known a Scotland where at least half the population support independence. And not only do young Scotland supporters want it, but they also fully expect it to happen.
Scotland’s World Cup story is much more akin to that of the hugely deserved ‘Sports Personality of the Year’ winner Rory McIlroy – near misses, perseverance, heartbreak, resilience – and finally joy and redemption.
How we are wrongly perceived and portrayed
But I think the tragically unfunny skit does do us all a favour by speaking to a broader truth about how we are represented or, more specifically, how others choose to present us.
We will be the only nation at the World Cup not in control of our own media, and this is how all our stories will be framed until we stop outsourcing our broadcasting – and all the other normal powers enjoyed by normal, self-governing nations – to another country. Our major championship football will be streamed from London studios and described by English commentators, so we need to take charge of football coverage as a first step towards reclaiming our own broadcasting. Because independence is many things, not least of which is the ability to tell your own story.
But first we need a vote, which will be held the day after we beat England in the final.
This article was published in a slightly different version on 24 December in The Orkney News.
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