Why I’m ready to break the habit of a lifetime

The 'only time I'd support England is if they were playing Cork' has kind of been the maxim of how I have lived my soccer life.

England were the ancient enemy, grandiose in their expectations and humdrum in their delivery, aside from 1966 and all that. Condescending towards our international flowering and frankly border-line racist towards the former non-white colonies that dared to lace up a boot and kick a ball with any intent.

The 1970s was awash with the images of football hooliganism in its first emergence, young men with nothing else to do except, to misquote Jarvis Cocker, fight and drink and screw .

We had the bananas on pitches and the games abandoned and the deaths and the endless footage of cops and yobs facing off. But there was a kind of desperation about it all, and it was consigned purely to the margins, a working class game patronised by a rudderless class, roundly condemned by the tabloids and broadsheets alike.

And then we had the 80s, the Belgrano, and the coarsening of public discourse on nationality and the hypocrisy of The Sun and its ilk. They took the Kipling view of British soldiers and corrupted it -`Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?” But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll` - substituting England’s Finest Hooligans for Tommy and the rampaging on foreign shores. In this country we have a word for commentators like that - sneakin’ regarders. They wrung their hands in public but gave them a sly pat on the back. Every game was a rerun of whatever war they had fought in the past.

Then the brutalism of the Chelsea Headhuners and The Firm neatly segued into the world of boorishness and unearned celebrity, but, thankfully tempered by such instances as Coventry City fans replying to the 'Stanley knife' taunts of a London club with a 'spear of broccolli' riposte and then producing said spears and waving them.

We had the Golden Generation who turned out to be fool’s gold. All WAGS and tats and shopping and being seen. Football took second place to the show. England worried about Rooney’s toe and then his hair and whether Becks would be picked, forgetting all the time that England’s best showing was in 1990 with a team that cared and a manager that understood them. Their reward: derision.

And the expectation still built. Culminating in England placing their hopes in a team whose dark soul was made up of John Terry and Ashley Cole, Game of Drone's eat your heart out. The result: catastrophe.

And now. Brazil. And England expects, sort of. There is some England Uber Alles drum beating and half-hearted flag waving. Tribalism, be it Scottish, or Welsh or Cornish or Mancunian or Wessexian is a siren call that seems to be more potent. My club above country, especially if my country is seen to be the Home Counties.

England expects: and from whom do they have to expect from?

And here’s the reason why I’ll break a lifetime of not cheering for England when they take on Italy. The squad.

Banished are those who would take the young English Jedi to the dark side. Instead the team is led by Steven Gerrard, a man who flirted with being a knob early in his career but then soon righted himself. I'm not talking about doing 'charidee' or 'what about the kids', but the fact that he took his job seriously and did it well. He was everything a captain should be in Liverpool's ultimately fruitless run for the Premiership title.

And in the wonderfully named Raheem Sterling we have a conflation of England's worst fear and greatest love. And Oxlade-Chamberlain, a name that sounds like his forefather charged with the Light Brigade. And Gary Cahill, with a name like that he could be a handy corner back on a Junior B team. And last of all Roy Hodgson, someone who seems to know what he's doing, what he has to work with and what can be achieved.

Maybe it’s what England need after the bloated hyperbole and adventures in imported monarchs (something they are used to), a return to honest endeavour, a team who are proud to play for their country rather than the gallery and fans, who appreciate that all of the above is what is needed. To do them proud, and by extension, us, bound as we are by conflict, friendship, blood, marriage, trade, beer and the need to keep Cork down.