My thanks to Heritage & Destiny editor Mark Cotterill for permission to reprint this article. H&D is a must read for those interested in staying on top of what's happening politically in the mother country and across Europe from a nationalist perspective.
Should Nationalists Follow and Support Professional Sports Teams?
by Hugh Perry
As these lines are being written the 2022 World Cup has recently ended. Close to four billion people watched some at least of the games which is over half the human race. Of what relevance, if any, is all this hoopla to nationalists and our cause?
One caveat at this point is required. The term “nationalist” becomes increasingly anachronistic, particularly in Western Europe and North America. There, the nation is defined as the government which, in truth, despises its own people. By nation we mean the people which has genetic, cultural, and moral elements.
Caveat two, we will not limit our discussion to international play, although the loss of folk identity is often particularly poignant there. All professional and many amateur sports seemingly cannot avoid becoming vehicles for the causes of racial amalgamation and the attendant demonization of any whites who tried over the years or at present to preserve racial integrity.
In fact, it might well be time to do away with terms of “multi-racialism” and multiculturalism. Those marching under the banner of these phrases are actually opponents of preserving the “multi” aspects of race and culture. At worst they seek to exalt non-White races and, at best, they work towards racial amalgamation. From this point on we will use the “multi” label for those who desire to preserve the unique identities of many races and cultures.
At the Qatar World Cup we found a strange anomaly. Only Western European teams featured peoples other than their own. (Eastern Europeans in this, as in much else, are very different.) Often most of their players were foreigners. African, Asian, Arabic and South America squads were virtually all composed of their own. Of course, this contradiction was never noted. When the French team would play the announcers would invariably remark on how the team was the “face of the new France.”
The northwestern and central “European” teams went a step further in obedience to Big Brother’s dogmas. Their captains wanted to wear armbands in support of LGBT-ism and it was only FIFA intervening on behalf of Muslim and other traditional sensibilities that brought this bizarre escapade to a conclusion. A decision, of course, widely and wildly demonized in global media.
The field of sports plays a large role in modern culture. It has been a prolonged battlefield for the forces of racial amalgamation versus those who support true multi-racialism. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, it was an accepted social norm that all professional team sports in America were limited to Whites, whether de facto or de jure is matter of some dispute. It was not until 1947 that Jackie Robinson became the first black to play in Major League Baseball. Until that point a variety of “Negro Leagues” played before all black audiences for teams located around the country.
Similarly, American football was first integrated by the Cleveland Browns as they joined the National Football League in 1950 from the All-American Football League (1946 -1949) which was previously integrated. As strange as it might seem today, the National Basketball Association did not have blacks in their league until 1950 as well.
In college sports no Southern teams ever admitted, and thus never played, blacks. They even refused to play teams which had blacks in their lineup. Northern schools had no problem with this until after Second World War. In keeping with good sportsmanship, the Southern schools when playing Northern teams would sit out some of their, mutually agreed upon, White players in order to not have an unfair advantage.
But by the mid-1950s the times were rapidly changing. Georgia Tech was invited to the 1956 Sugar Bowl game there to face the Pittsburgh Panthers known as Pitt. The Georgia state legislature forbad the team to play since Pitt had one black player in their lineup. State law at that time forbade participation in mixed race sporting events. Tech students rioted demanding to play and in the end the school and state relented and allowed the team to participate.
This was a clear demonstration that the hearts of many Southerners especially the young, were moving toward the racial amalgamation position. But it was several galling defeats at the hands of integrated teams and great pressure from the national government and media that fully dragged the South into the integration era. On March 19th, 1966, Texas Western defeated Kentucky in the NCAA championship game. The winning team featured five blacks as its starters. Kentucky was a still an all-White side. This event has entered into the popular consciousness via the 2006 film Glory Road where, as could be imagined, the event is depicted as a glorious moment in American history.
Similarly, Alabama began its 1970 season by playing, for the first time, against an integrated team, that of Southern California, and losing. This was a major factor in causing Southern schools to begin to recruit non-White athletes. Today blacks dominate all levels of football and basketball in America, even in the South.
In football the Washington Redskins was the last team to never have had a black in their lineup. George Preston Marshall was their owner and he steadfastly maintained that since Washington DC was still segregated the team should reflect the mores of the city. Finally in 1962 after many threats from the Kennedy administration Marshall relented and signed a black player, Bobby Mitchell to the team.
Yet despite all these changes it is, as always, never enough. One of America’s most prolific sports writers John Feinstein, who has authored thirty books on athletics, just wrote, Raise a Fist, Take a Knee: Race and the Illusion of Progress in Modern Sports (2021). The theme of the book is one heard in all mainstream media in America. More must be done. Everything is still tainted by “racists” and “racism”. In fact, despite the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell originally condemning the kneeling, during the national anthem by a handful of black players, eventually hundreds of players black and White were kneeling and raising their fists in protest against the never defeated “discrimination” and “racism.” In a short time, Goodell himself bowed before Big Brother, explaining how Colin Kapernick the first black knee-taker was right and how sorry he was for opposing the knee-takers.
The title of Feinstein’s book is part based on the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City where two American blacks raised their fists in protests during the medal ceremony of the 200 meters run. The reader should keep in mind that by this point both Rhodesia and South Africa were banned from the Olympics and all international competitions because of their “racism” and apartheid. But par for the course more must be done.
In the UK this, too, recently became the practice as many teams would kneel and raise their fists before matches. Broadcasters had a hard time explaining what it all meant. Some said it was a protest against “racism.” Others told us it was effort to promote “inclusion.” In America stadiums wrote the new anti “racism” catechism in the grass of their fields.
Authors devoted entire books to the courage of the knee takers. To critical acclaim, in 2021, David Zirin authored The Kapernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World. The book featured hundreds of tales of knee takers at all levels and types of American sports, presumably all “world changers” as well.
Over 70% of professional football and basketball players are black. In the NBA over half the coaches are black. Yet, this is still “not enough.” Baseball forever bemoans that not enough American blacks are in the league. Names of teams are changed because, supposedly American Red-Indians are upset by them. Negro league statistics are now included in Major League Baseball statistics.
So where does all this leave nationalists. Should we continue to follow and pay for professional sports? Let us pause for a moment here and reflect on the changes sports have wrought beyond the immediate and obvious one of normalizing the end of racial distinctions. They have changed the nature of the previously given culture. Before integration athletes celebrated goals, touchdowns, home runs and the like by receiving a few calm handshakes from teammates. Today they dance, prance, often striking a pose like a chest thumping gorilla. Incidentally, today, Whites are as apt to do this as blacks.
In a fascinating example, professional wrestling which has been a staged performance for well over a century, has now altered its story lines. Once the humble rule abiding “face” would battle the bragging, cheating “heel.” The “face” was always well mannered and would never break the rules until driven beyond endurance by the “heel.” It was a morality play. Today it is, at best, amoral and, at worst, immoral. The humble hero is now also a self-promoting egocentric maniac. There was little to differentiate Hulk Hogan and Dusty Rhodes (“faces” of the late twentieth century) from the villains Superstar Bully Graham and Nature Boy Rick Flair. All bragged. All strutted. All called up the crowd to exalt them. One of the main sources for this change was Muhammad Ali who brought self-promotion to the role of heavy weight champion.
One might say that whereas Joe Louis followed the standards of Anglo-Saxon heroes, today we find the Whites mimicking the theatrics of the non-Whites.
Sports also serve as a never-ending stage for anti-White self-abasement. Some years back – April 15th, 1997 – which was the fiftieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking the “color line,” a New York local sports show posed to its listeners the “unanswerable” question of, what were people thinking back then? How could anybody allow there to be separate leagues for blacks and Whites? Of course, no caller could (or perhaps dared) offer an explanation. All agreed it was utter evil perpetrated by the bad White people.
Recent years, in addition to knees taken and fists clenched, have seen sports talk shows invariably raise the question of whether there are “enough” black coaches and owners. (Incidentally no one suggests that there should be affirmative action for “traumatized Whites” who are enormously underrepresented in football and basketball.
In addition, what is truly amazing when watching the Qatar World Cup is why it was only the White European teams of Western and Central Europe that took the knee and wished to promote LGBT celebration. No other nations, including the African ones, could have cared less.
The integration of sports yields a never-ending wave of movies demonizing Whites and praising racial amalgamation. A few examples of a far larger list from recent years would include Cool Running (1993), Remember the Titans (2000), Glory Road (2006), Invictus (2008), Black in Blue (2016), 47 (2013), John Barnes Poetry in Motion (2018). The loss of racial integrity on so many fronts and the canonization of the amalgamation approach is part of the central mythology of all sports.
Many football grounds in England and to a lesser extent in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, were once successful recruitment sites for nationalist parties such as the NF, BNP and BM. However now they are used by owners and players to wage war against the ever present “racism” and to promote LGBT-ism.
We all understand full well the hold that sports have on male psyche. We want to play and watch, support teams, marvel at feats and records. Pele (who recently died aged 82) was certainly right when he called soccer “the beautiful game.’ And going back to ancient Greece sports is part of what we love to do and observe. And let us not forget the role it plays in social and familial bounding. At a time of civilization disintegration, sports provide ties that bind. And attending games remains largely a White affair. We cheer on teams that feature blacks way out of proportion to their percentage in society and cheer them on while in company almost only of Whites.
This is part of the strange anomaly of sports. Our children hang pictures of black athletes on their bedroom walls. Whatever one may say about their talents and abilities (and they do seem to be prodigious) it certainly cannot help the cause of racial identity to have our population engaged in a frenzy of public adulation of those who consistently alter the very fabric of national existence.
Some will yet object that we can still pursue our political activities, devote time to them and just here and there venerate non- Whites and marvel at their exploits. Be all that as it may, it would still seem that one’s devotion to racial integrity has to be undermined by devoted sports following.
Yet, when all American sports leagues and the English Premiership went, well, totally daft in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death it became ever more difficult for some Whites to follow sports. This was true especially in the American NBA which devoted massive efforts to its “anti-racism” and paying millions in tribute to BLM and other black causes. But now all that has quieted down a bit. I suspect that few still kneel or raise fists. (The “English national” team may be among the major holdouts!) The White fans have come back.
We have our teams and do care, even against our conscious will, about their fortunes. And we can’t help but marvel over good plays and statistics. Conclusions here aren’t easy. I suppose we will have to conclude that if someone can limit himself and his children to following local teams and playing or coaching the game at that level, then that might well be the better course.
But if not emotionally possible, then follow if you must but know that in this eleventh hour, there are probably far more important ways to spend one’s time and money. But we will not conclude with a puritanical demand that we abjure friends, pubs, camaraderie, and match day. Sports has been a dangerous vehicle to our civilization’s suicide as well as a distraction. But if we are to lose our nations to invaders, well, let us at least find solace in friendship among our own.
Hugh Perry, Lake Placid, New York
H&D Editor's note: The H&D team are all sports fans of one kind or another. Peter Rushton, who follows both Oldham Athletic and Mossley and myself, I follow both Wolves and Chorley, are big football fans. Peter also a big cricket fan and follows Lancashire County Cricket Club as well as the English national side. Tony Paulsen is more of a rugby union fan, although he does also follow the Croatian national football team and Ian Freeman is a longstanding rugby union supporter, having played the game at school, and follows the Welsh national team.
Even before the left-wing takeover of the English football team, I had long given up on them and followed Northern Ireland instead, partly because two of my boyhood Wolves heroes played for Northern Ireland, Derek Dougan (the Doug) and Danny Hegan, and later because of my support for the Ulster Loyalist cause.
So, I guess our answer is yes, the H&D team are nationalists and we do still support/follow professional sports teams. Many nationalists will strongly disagree with us and say that we should have nothing to do with professional sports anymore, and I can see their point, especially regarding the English/Scottish Premier Leagues, where almost every football club has forgotten its roots – sometimes intentionally – or if they haven’t, would like to do so – this being the case of (Glasgow) Celtic and Rangers in Scotland, and to a lesser extent, and for slightly different reasons, Tottenham Hotspur (AKA the Yids) in England.
The Tottenham/Yid situation is a strange one, which I will cover in an article in a future issue of H&D. They were always known as a “Jewish club”, although not as high profile as Leeds United who were known for many years as “The Jewish club.” Leeds – like Tottenham – had a large Jewish population, and were owned in their golden years by Jewish families. However Leeds fans unlike Tottenham were never Yids.
However, I digress. Even though I don't go in person to Molineux Stadium and watch Wolves in person anymore (and even if I wanted to it would be very difficult for me to obtain match day tickets, and even if I could, would I really want to pay £50 plus to sit in the stand?) I do still watch most of their live TV games on Sky Sports and BT Sports – mainly down my local pub, with my mates over a pint or six!
However, I do go and support my local non-league teams, Chorley almost every home game and to a lesser extent Bamber Bridge. For one thing the overall atmosphere at these non-league grounds, is so much better than the over-priced plastic Premier League. The fans know most of the players, management, and even the owners – who also come into the social club afterwards for a drink – which would be unthinkable higher up the league pyramid. It’s more of a family and less of a business at non-league level, and perhaps that’s the attraction.
I will leave the final words to a nationalist friend I used to know many years ago in the West Midlands, who followed West Bromwich Albion FC (WBA) – who at the time were Wolves' main local rivals – in the 1970s. Those older H&D readers who are also keen football fans will remember that WBA were one of the first “big teams” to sign black players, and in their case not just one but three (Laurie Cunningham, Brendon Batson and Cyrille Regis) - who became known as “The Three Degrees” (named after the famous black American female vocal group).
I once asked my friend (pulling his leg so to speak), “how can you support WBA when they have three blacks playing for them?”. He answered me back, “Mark, I supported WBA long before they had any black players, and I will still be supporting them when all the blacks have gone”. Good answer. Even from a Baggies fan!
This article was first published in the March/April issue Heritage And Destiny magazine, #113, to whom we give full acknowledgements. For a sample copy of Heritage and Destiny magazine, please write to - H&D, 40 Birkett Drive, Preston, PR2 6HE, England, UK, or Email - heritageanddestiny@yahoo.com - or check out their website at - http://www.heritageanddestiny.com-
Should Nationalists Follow and Support Professional Sports Teams?
by Hugh Perry
As these lines are being written the 2022 World Cup has recently ended. Close to four billion people watched some at least of the games which is over half the human race. Of what relevance, if any, is all this hoopla to nationalists and our cause?
One caveat at this point is required. The term “nationalist” becomes increasingly anachronistic, particularly in Western Europe and North America. There, the nation is defined as the government which, in truth, despises its own people. By nation we mean the people which has genetic, cultural, and moral elements.
Caveat two, we will not limit our discussion to international play, although the loss of folk identity is often particularly poignant there. All professional and many amateur sports seemingly cannot avoid becoming vehicles for the causes of racial amalgamation and the attendant demonization of any whites who tried over the years or at present to preserve racial integrity.
In fact, it might well be time to do away with terms of “multi-racialism” and multiculturalism. Those marching under the banner of these phrases are actually opponents of preserving the “multi” aspects of race and culture. At worst they seek to exalt non-White races and, at best, they work towards racial amalgamation. From this point on we will use the “multi” label for those who desire to preserve the unique identities of many races and cultures.
At the Qatar World Cup we found a strange anomaly. Only Western European teams featured peoples other than their own. (Eastern Europeans in this, as in much else, are very different.) Often most of their players were foreigners. African, Asian, Arabic and South America squads were virtually all composed of their own. Of course, this contradiction was never noted. When the French team would play the announcers would invariably remark on how the team was the “face of the new France.”
The northwestern and central “European” teams went a step further in obedience to Big Brother’s dogmas. Their captains wanted to wear armbands in support of LGBT-ism and it was only FIFA intervening on behalf of Muslim and other traditional sensibilities that brought this bizarre escapade to a conclusion. A decision, of course, widely and wildly demonized in global media.
The field of sports plays a large role in modern culture. It has been a prolonged battlefield for the forces of racial amalgamation versus those who support true multi-racialism. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, it was an accepted social norm that all professional team sports in America were limited to Whites, whether de facto or de jure is matter of some dispute. It was not until 1947 that Jackie Robinson became the first black to play in Major League Baseball. Until that point a variety of “Negro Leagues” played before all black audiences for teams located around the country.
Similarly, American football was first integrated by the Cleveland Browns as they joined the National Football League in 1950 from the All-American Football League (1946 -1949) which was previously integrated. As strange as it might seem today, the National Basketball Association did not have blacks in their league until 1950 as well.
In college sports no Southern teams ever admitted, and thus never played, blacks. They even refused to play teams which had blacks in their lineup. Northern schools had no problem with this until after Second World War. In keeping with good sportsmanship, the Southern schools when playing Northern teams would sit out some of their, mutually agreed upon, White players in order to not have an unfair advantage.
But by the mid-1950s the times were rapidly changing. Georgia Tech was invited to the 1956 Sugar Bowl game there to face the Pittsburgh Panthers known as Pitt. The Georgia state legislature forbad the team to play since Pitt had one black player in their lineup. State law at that time forbade participation in mixed race sporting events. Tech students rioted demanding to play and in the end the school and state relented and allowed the team to participate.
This was a clear demonstration that the hearts of many Southerners especially the young, were moving toward the racial amalgamation position. But it was several galling defeats at the hands of integrated teams and great pressure from the national government and media that fully dragged the South into the integration era. On March 19th, 1966, Texas Western defeated Kentucky in the NCAA championship game. The winning team featured five blacks as its starters. Kentucky was a still an all-White side. This event has entered into the popular consciousness via the 2006 film Glory Road where, as could be imagined, the event is depicted as a glorious moment in American history.
Similarly, Alabama began its 1970 season by playing, for the first time, against an integrated team, that of Southern California, and losing. This was a major factor in causing Southern schools to begin to recruit non-White athletes. Today blacks dominate all levels of football and basketball in America, even in the South.
In football the Washington Redskins was the last team to never have had a black in their lineup. George Preston Marshall was their owner and he steadfastly maintained that since Washington DC was still segregated the team should reflect the mores of the city. Finally in 1962 after many threats from the Kennedy administration Marshall relented and signed a black player, Bobby Mitchell to the team.
Yet despite all these changes it is, as always, never enough. One of America’s most prolific sports writers John Feinstein, who has authored thirty books on athletics, just wrote, Raise a Fist, Take a Knee: Race and the Illusion of Progress in Modern Sports (2021). The theme of the book is one heard in all mainstream media in America. More must be done. Everything is still tainted by “racists” and “racism”. In fact, despite the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell originally condemning the kneeling, during the national anthem by a handful of black players, eventually hundreds of players black and White were kneeling and raising their fists in protest against the never defeated “discrimination” and “racism.” In a short time, Goodell himself bowed before Big Brother, explaining how Colin Kapernick the first black knee-taker was right and how sorry he was for opposing the knee-takers.
The title of Feinstein’s book is part based on the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City where two American blacks raised their fists in protests during the medal ceremony of the 200 meters run. The reader should keep in mind that by this point both Rhodesia and South Africa were banned from the Olympics and all international competitions because of their “racism” and apartheid. But par for the course more must be done.
In the UK this, too, recently became the practice as many teams would kneel and raise their fists before matches. Broadcasters had a hard time explaining what it all meant. Some said it was a protest against “racism.” Others told us it was effort to promote “inclusion.” In America stadiums wrote the new anti “racism” catechism in the grass of their fields.
Authors devoted entire books to the courage of the knee takers. To critical acclaim, in 2021, David Zirin authored The Kapernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World. The book featured hundreds of tales of knee takers at all levels and types of American sports, presumably all “world changers” as well.
Over 70% of professional football and basketball players are black. In the NBA over half the coaches are black. Yet, this is still “not enough.” Baseball forever bemoans that not enough American blacks are in the league. Names of teams are changed because, supposedly American Red-Indians are upset by them. Negro league statistics are now included in Major League Baseball statistics.
So where does all this leave nationalists. Should we continue to follow and pay for professional sports? Let us pause for a moment here and reflect on the changes sports have wrought beyond the immediate and obvious one of normalizing the end of racial distinctions. They have changed the nature of the previously given culture. Before integration athletes celebrated goals, touchdowns, home runs and the like by receiving a few calm handshakes from teammates. Today they dance, prance, often striking a pose like a chest thumping gorilla. Incidentally, today, Whites are as apt to do this as blacks.
In a fascinating example, professional wrestling which has been a staged performance for well over a century, has now altered its story lines. Once the humble rule abiding “face” would battle the bragging, cheating “heel.” The “face” was always well mannered and would never break the rules until driven beyond endurance by the “heel.” It was a morality play. Today it is, at best, amoral and, at worst, immoral. The humble hero is now also a self-promoting egocentric maniac. There was little to differentiate Hulk Hogan and Dusty Rhodes (“faces” of the late twentieth century) from the villains Superstar Bully Graham and Nature Boy Rick Flair. All bragged. All strutted. All called up the crowd to exalt them. One of the main sources for this change was Muhammad Ali who brought self-promotion to the role of heavy weight champion.
One might say that whereas Joe Louis followed the standards of Anglo-Saxon heroes, today we find the Whites mimicking the theatrics of the non-Whites.
Sports also serve as a never-ending stage for anti-White self-abasement. Some years back – April 15th, 1997 – which was the fiftieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking the “color line,” a New York local sports show posed to its listeners the “unanswerable” question of, what were people thinking back then? How could anybody allow there to be separate leagues for blacks and Whites? Of course, no caller could (or perhaps dared) offer an explanation. All agreed it was utter evil perpetrated by the bad White people.
Recent years, in addition to knees taken and fists clenched, have seen sports talk shows invariably raise the question of whether there are “enough” black coaches and owners. (Incidentally no one suggests that there should be affirmative action for “traumatized Whites” who are enormously underrepresented in football and basketball.
In addition, what is truly amazing when watching the Qatar World Cup is why it was only the White European teams of Western and Central Europe that took the knee and wished to promote LGBT celebration. No other nations, including the African ones, could have cared less.
The integration of sports yields a never-ending wave of movies demonizing Whites and praising racial amalgamation. A few examples of a far larger list from recent years would include Cool Running (1993), Remember the Titans (2000), Glory Road (2006), Invictus (2008), Black in Blue (2016), 47 (2013), John Barnes Poetry in Motion (2018). The loss of racial integrity on so many fronts and the canonization of the amalgamation approach is part of the central mythology of all sports.
Many football grounds in England and to a lesser extent in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, were once successful recruitment sites for nationalist parties such as the NF, BNP and BM. However now they are used by owners and players to wage war against the ever present “racism” and to promote LGBT-ism.
We all understand full well the hold that sports have on male psyche. We want to play and watch, support teams, marvel at feats and records. Pele (who recently died aged 82) was certainly right when he called soccer “the beautiful game.’ And going back to ancient Greece sports is part of what we love to do and observe. And let us not forget the role it plays in social and familial bounding. At a time of civilization disintegration, sports provide ties that bind. And attending games remains largely a White affair. We cheer on teams that feature blacks way out of proportion to their percentage in society and cheer them on while in company almost only of Whites.
This is part of the strange anomaly of sports. Our children hang pictures of black athletes on their bedroom walls. Whatever one may say about their talents and abilities (and they do seem to be prodigious) it certainly cannot help the cause of racial identity to have our population engaged in a frenzy of public adulation of those who consistently alter the very fabric of national existence.
Some will yet object that we can still pursue our political activities, devote time to them and just here and there venerate non- Whites and marvel at their exploits. Be all that as it may, it would still seem that one’s devotion to racial integrity has to be undermined by devoted sports following.
Yet, when all American sports leagues and the English Premiership went, well, totally daft in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death it became ever more difficult for some Whites to follow sports. This was true especially in the American NBA which devoted massive efforts to its “anti-racism” and paying millions in tribute to BLM and other black causes. But now all that has quieted down a bit. I suspect that few still kneel or raise fists. (The “English national” team may be among the major holdouts!) The White fans have come back.
We have our teams and do care, even against our conscious will, about their fortunes. And we can’t help but marvel over good plays and statistics. Conclusions here aren’t easy. I suppose we will have to conclude that if someone can limit himself and his children to following local teams and playing or coaching the game at that level, then that might well be the better course.
But if not emotionally possible, then follow if you must but know that in this eleventh hour, there are probably far more important ways to spend one’s time and money. But we will not conclude with a puritanical demand that we abjure friends, pubs, camaraderie, and match day. Sports has been a dangerous vehicle to our civilization’s suicide as well as a distraction. But if we are to lose our nations to invaders, well, let us at least find solace in friendship among our own.
Hugh Perry, Lake Placid, New York
H&D Editor's note: The H&D team are all sports fans of one kind or another. Peter Rushton, who follows both Oldham Athletic and Mossley and myself, I follow both Wolves and Chorley, are big football fans. Peter also a big cricket fan and follows Lancashire County Cricket Club as well as the English national side. Tony Paulsen is more of a rugby union fan, although he does also follow the Croatian national football team and Ian Freeman is a longstanding rugby union supporter, having played the game at school, and follows the Welsh national team.
Even before the left-wing takeover of the English football team, I had long given up on them and followed Northern Ireland instead, partly because two of my boyhood Wolves heroes played for Northern Ireland, Derek Dougan (the Doug) and Danny Hegan, and later because of my support for the Ulster Loyalist cause.
So, I guess our answer is yes, the H&D team are nationalists and we do still support/follow professional sports teams. Many nationalists will strongly disagree with us and say that we should have nothing to do with professional sports anymore, and I can see their point, especially regarding the English/Scottish Premier Leagues, where almost every football club has forgotten its roots – sometimes intentionally – or if they haven’t, would like to do so – this being the case of (Glasgow) Celtic and Rangers in Scotland, and to a lesser extent, and for slightly different reasons, Tottenham Hotspur (AKA the Yids) in England.
The Tottenham/Yid situation is a strange one, which I will cover in an article in a future issue of H&D. They were always known as a “Jewish club”, although not as high profile as Leeds United who were known for many years as “The Jewish club.” Leeds – like Tottenham – had a large Jewish population, and were owned in their golden years by Jewish families. However Leeds fans unlike Tottenham were never Yids.
However, I digress. Even though I don't go in person to Molineux Stadium and watch Wolves in person anymore (and even if I wanted to it would be very difficult for me to obtain match day tickets, and even if I could, would I really want to pay £50 plus to sit in the stand?) I do still watch most of their live TV games on Sky Sports and BT Sports – mainly down my local pub, with my mates over a pint or six!
However, I do go and support my local non-league teams, Chorley almost every home game and to a lesser extent Bamber Bridge. For one thing the overall atmosphere at these non-league grounds, is so much better than the over-priced plastic Premier League. The fans know most of the players, management, and even the owners – who also come into the social club afterwards for a drink – which would be unthinkable higher up the league pyramid. It’s more of a family and less of a business at non-league level, and perhaps that’s the attraction.
I will leave the final words to a nationalist friend I used to know many years ago in the West Midlands, who followed West Bromwich Albion FC (WBA) – who at the time were Wolves' main local rivals – in the 1970s. Those older H&D readers who are also keen football fans will remember that WBA were one of the first “big teams” to sign black players, and in their case not just one but three (Laurie Cunningham, Brendon Batson and Cyrille Regis) - who became known as “The Three Degrees” (named after the famous black American female vocal group).
I once asked my friend (pulling his leg so to speak), “how can you support WBA when they have three blacks playing for them?”. He answered me back, “Mark, I supported WBA long before they had any black players, and I will still be supporting them when all the blacks have gone”. Good answer. Even from a Baggies fan!
This article was first published in the March/April issue Heritage And Destiny magazine, #113, to whom we give full acknowledgements. For a sample copy of Heritage and Destiny magazine, please write to - H&D, 40 Birkett Drive, Preston, PR2 6HE, England, UK, or Email - heritageanddestiny@yahoo.com - or check out their website at - http://www.heritageanddestiny.com-
