The BBC report refers to him as being British and as 'The Scot'. Which makes sense.
Just disivered that you can hire the multi-use parks I play 5-a-side on for tennis as well. £20 an hour whether for tennis or 5s. So its £2 a head for football and £10 a head for tennis. They also charge £5 for some knuckledragger to come down and put the net up. I can see why its not so popular. And also, its rubbish. IMO
Don't they have people to do that sort of thing for them?
Yes old boy we most certainly do. Pimms anyone?
ime, tennis in England revolves around endless games of doubles, afternoon tea and scones.
quote Pat Cash, "....a very good player but he has that comfortable, middle-class look about him .... The snobby image of the All England Club and Queen's Club is not much help either."
They also charge £5 for some knuckledragger to come down and put the net up
Do you not have to pay £5 for knuckledragger to come and take it down?
no, it's usually been snorted or deep-fried long before anyone gets a chance to take it down.
They also charge £5 for some knuckledragger to come down and put the net up.
That's a highly derogatory statement which is insulting to anyone, probably Scottish in this case, who happens to be in that line of work. The fact that you have never seen anyone play tennis confirms that you must walk about with your head firmly up your @rse.
The weather is the biggest factor preventing tennis being more popular in Scotland. It can't be the cost as golf is probably more expensive and there are no shortage of courses and players.
BTW IMO he's Scottish and British
Just to clarify
Theres 2 sorts of British, The first is being a SUBJECT (please take note) of Great Britain- This is why sensible Scots denounce being British.
The second is being an inhabitant of the British Isles (which includes Ireland)- I dont see a problem with this softer designation.
As for Andy Murray, you'd have to ask him, but I do believe he's a Hibbie[code] ), unlike that self declared British sportsman the jambo Chris Hoy.
Also just to clarify,
ignoring the cultural/genetic aspects, is the only requirement to be a 'constitutional Scot' one of residency ?
What if an english bloke came along and beat Andy Murray, I bet Mr Murray would be just Scottish then!
As far as I'm concerned Hilldodger, If you live in Scotland,and like the place and want to stay here, then aye!.
BTW there are no genetic aspects, not a trace, to being Scottish.
Throw his "anyone but England" comments back at him: "anyone but Murray".
[i]As far as I'm concerned Hilldodger, If you live in Scotland,and like the place and want to stay here, then aye
BTW there are no genetic aspects, not a trace, to being Scottish[/i]
Interesting, so all the 'media hype' about what is it to be Engl/Scott-ish deosn't actually mean much to the average person ?
I certainly wouldn't even be able to define what it is to feel British let alone English 😕
When I was a kid way back in the midst of time tennis was common in Scotland - or certainly in Glasgow where I grew up. Every local park had tennis courts and you could hire them and the kit for pennies. Of course this was one of the casualties of the thatcher recession. There are still a lot of private tennis clubs - it was the summer sport rather than cricket. More of the posh kids sport now as there are few municipal courts left. I used to play with my school friends from Darnley and Arden.
Why does he do this?
I've just watched the interview with the BBC and regardless of how magic his tennis might be, why, oh why does one come away from his interviews thinking he's spent the last few hours with a Demontor from a Harry Potter movie.
He's so unenthusiastic about his play and the prospects ahead. How can we get behind such a colourless cardboard cut out of a human being when he himself seems almost bored by the whole process? I want my head to be buzzing with excitement, but just listen to his syllables in the interviews this afternoon, he's reading it all from some autocue. Just awful.
He is a tennis player not Winston Churchill, he trains to win tennis matches, I imagine he wants to get the media stuff done as quickly as possible so he can talk to his coaches and mum. We expect too much from our sport stars how rounded do you expect someone who is travelling 40 plus weeks a year from hotel to hotel who has spent much of his childhood training. And anyway he is funnier than Michael McIntyre.
[i]casualties of the thatcher recession[/i]
Crikey, I thought someone would have invoked TJ's law an awful lot earlier..
His media interviews on TV are lifeless monologues.
He is, I believe, contractually obliged to do post match interviews.
If he fails to connect with people on a human level such as he is at present, people will not follow his progress and he will fail to win our hearts & devotion as that is what is at the very essence of sport as a viewer - we want to be entertained and like it or not, his TV interviews undo so much of the tennis. Spending time with a media coach would be worth every penny spent imho.
Tim Henman was boring in his interviews as well and no one supported him either.
He fulfils his contractual commitments by turning up, they don't require him to be funny or witty and he does not try. Thank god for that based on what passes for wit on the BBC coverage of Wimbledon.
Ti29r - did you see the interview after the Nadal match - he was actually funny articulate and came over well - even a couple of laughs, Much to my surprise I might add.
Andy - glad my efforts are not wasted. In all truth the courts must have been very heavily subsidised and expensive to run. In a time of much skintness it might actually have been a reasonable economy to stop it.
As for nationality who cares? The "British if he wins Scots if he loses" is much less common than it was - I think the complaints got thru to the media but still happens occasionally. Its all a part of English folk using English and British as synonyms which still is a regular occurance.
Still when few of the folk of these islands can describe the difference between British Isles, UK and Great Britain and often use the terms wrongly it is hardly surprising.
>His media interviews on TV are lifeless monologues.,
Hey if Andy Murrays all you've got to complain about you've been getting off lightly. What about all the lifeless cricket drones we Scots get force fed by the English Meeja - that really is purgatory...
This thread is about Mr M.
I would like to like him, but he seems so utterly joyless in his interviews, which must take some doing.
I think the Dementors analogy is apt and quite disappointing as we could well see him rise to the very top - he's the equivalent of Mr Brown, fulfilling a stereotypical puritanical, frugal, colourless Scot - not what we want at all!
Some of today's tennis was exactly what we need - it was electric at times.
But I can't warm to the guy when his monologues are so utterly bland and without emotion or expression or colour. Listen to his inflections and tonal range when next you hear him being interviewes - today would be a great example. I think the highlight of his day going on today's emotive interview might have been saving electricity by switching off his fridge light.
Ti - but he wasn't like that in the interview I mention above.
TBH I'd rather he was singleminded and focussed on winning tennis tournaments rather than being a media darling, and speaking as a northern English person, I can relate to him more than I could to Henman and all the "Tiger Tim" nicey nicey Pimms and middle aged posh ladies getting overexcited about "Wimbers" each year.
His media interviews on TV are lifeless monologues.
Perhaps Andy is a little reserved due to the fact he suffered having to go through the Dunblane massacre as an 8 year old.
Give the guy a break.
He does seem to have gone a bit transatlantic in his accent these days- maybe he's not worried about anybody relating to him except Lloyd Grossman and Joss Stone?
Personally, I think he should improve his media image by locking himself in a room with tapes of Valentino Rossi interviews and some psycho-suggestive drugs.
Then, after cruising to another world championship victory, we could debate whether 'Andrea' Murray was British or Italian. 🙂
It'd be nice for the sweaties to win something. Maybe they'd feel better about themselves and stop being such lousy neighbours 😉
I think its more that he was set up in the interview where he ended up saying " anyone but England" and thus he is very cautious about what he says now.
Im Scottish but obviously British as well and come to think of it European also Im from the Northern hemisphere and mother Earth.
Good luck to Murray for sunday ,Im sure the whole of Dunblane , scotland and the UK will be cheering him on. He's a tennis player at the end of the day not a talk show host so why does he get a poor rep for being boring. FFS Tim Henman wasn't exactly a laugh a minute , Oh and he was shit at tennis.
+1 for WestKipper as our Murray Media Mogul.
He needs you WK, as sure as eggs is eggs. Can you start tomorrow?
(I think the whole "Perhaps Andy is a little reserved due to the fact he suffered having to go through the Dunblane massacre as an 8 year old" is a bit below the belt as there's never an answer to that)
Sorry, I'm not sure the drugs idea is too good.
Unlike us cyclists, tennis players never take drugs. 😉
If Henman was so "shit" at tennis how come he won so much in prize money, wasn't he also second in the world rankings for a while?
I wish I was as good as him at at anything.
Did come across as a bit boring but then again Sampras wasn't excactly a bundle of laughs.
Maybe (as someone mentioned) being a world class athlete takes a different mindset to all us MTB experts on here?
I think he says he is Scottish so let’s just leave it as that.
Always come over well on telly, I think. He seems intelligent and thoughtful, which is decent enough. On my list of sportspeople I'd like to meet.
I'd be crap at interviews if I was an elite sportsman. Big if like! The questions are so inane with all the usual cliches being trotted out. He must just go on to auto pilot. Also, getting interviewed at the end of a hard match must be pretty tough - some matches last over 4 hours. After a 4 hour bike ride I don't usually feel like talking 😀
BTW for the benefit of thos who didn't see it, BBC Scotland regional news referred to him repeatedly as British. More times than they called him Scottish anyway.
FWIW, I've always been impressed with Tim Henman, and would echo the views that he was quality.
I always thought that it was his wretched 'come on Tim' fans that kinda brought his street cred down, not his playing.
From todays BBC website article on McLaren...
Button has arrived at McLaren after winning the title with Brawn, who race as Mercedes this season, to give McLaren an [b]all-English[/b] pairing.
It is also the first pairing of two[b] British [/b]world champions since Graham Hill joined Jim Clark at Lotus in 1968.
Both statements are factually correct, but it's this sort of writing that winds some folk up.
Both statements are factually correct, but it's this sort of writing that winds some folk up.
Why, cos it makes them feel inadequate ?
Let's just say that it feeds a certain paranoia
media are good at that
Both statements are factually correct, but it's this sort of writing that winds some folk up.
How else do you suggest they wrote it? Are they not allowed to describe JB and LH as English because they use the term "British" later in the same article?
British
Irish
Definitely Scottish.