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Jersey’s own Euro line-up
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The Euro tournament (for the uninitiated, it’s a bit like the World Cup, only without Brazil) comes round only once every four years but it makes up for lost time with a densely packed programme of fixtures between the 16 squads to have made it to the final stages of competition.
Euro 2012, which starts tomorrow, should be another source of pleasure and excitement in a memorable summer also graced by the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics. Pitting some of the biggest stars of the world’s most popular sport against each other in a contest jointly hosted by Poland and Ukraine, it will attract huge global television audiences and provoke keen rivalries among national supporters across the competing continent and beyond.
In Jersey, the line-up of nations contesting Euro 2012 serves also to illustrate a telling point about the modern make-up of the Island’s population. There can be few places in which so many of the teams will receive so much partisan support from such a high proportion of the population in such close proximity to each other.
The large numbers of Jersey residents of English, Portuguese, Irish or Polish background will ensure that those teams enjoy vociferous backing, especially if they should meet each in the later stages of the tournament. France and Italy, whose citizens have contributed so much to the cultural melting-pot which created today’s Jersey, will also be well represented, both on the field of play and in the sports bars of St Helier.
Let us hope that the international rivalry expresses itself here in a friendly, peaceful and mutually respectful fashion, helping to put some of the sportsmanship back into a sport which the comparatively recent opportunity to make vast sums of money has infected with a cynicism far removed from, say, the spirit of 1966’s golden summer which nostalgic but perennially frustrated England fans so often evoke. Despite the commercial hype, and contrary to Bill Shankly’s famous but ill-judged jest, football is nowhere near being a matter of life and death, but it can still be an incomparable spectacle for all ages, sexes and nationalities to enjoy.
With the right approach from the start, Jersey’s patchwork population can be brought closer together by the shared sporting experience of the next few weeks.
May it be a memorable one – and may the best team win.
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