Craig Hazell is a legal alien…an Englishman watching Scottish Football
by Craig Hazell (@Craig Hazell)There’s always a moment of awkwardness when someone asks me that classic ice breaker, “who do you support?” There’s something slightly unusual about a guy who lives in Glasgow supporting Heart of Midlothian but its frankly absurd for the voice saying those words to be quite obviously English. The boring truth is that I moved to Edinburgh when I was 14 and having moved around a lot as a child, I never stayed in one place long enough to be a ‘proper fan’. Edinburgh was the first place I stayed longer than a couple of years. There’s no ‘uncle used to play for them’ or ‘I once had trials before I did my cruciate’. It was a case of boring geography and Hearts were the closest team. Retrospectively, it makes me shudder that if I lived a few miles the wrong way and I could be sporting green and white.
Creamola Foam. Traditionally, this was a way of Scottish parents getting their kids used to an adult life spent drinking Resolve or Alka Seltzer to cope with the effects of chronic alcoholism.The look on the other person’s face in this conversation has by this point turned to a mixture of apparent boredom and a sudden realisation that I am one of the few people in Scotland who could actually have chosen to support anyone I wanted in Scotland legitimately, with family coming from both sides of the Old Firm. “You actually chose to support Hearts?”. Yes. Yes I did. That is not to say my family didn’t try to interfere when I was a young boy living in England. There is somewhere a photo of me in Rangers colours. When my mum came back from a visit to see my grandparents she brought with her two gifts. Some Creamola Foam, and a Rangers away shirt (A white Gascoigne era one I think), two quintessentially Scottish gifts. One now a Scottish institution fighting for their financial survival from oblivion and the other……well I am sure you can do this yourself.
There were, however, a few transitions from being a fan of English football to the Scottish equivalent and here are the top 5 I discovered in my immersion to the SPL.
1.The language barrier. It’s an obvious one but it cannot be ignored. I’m English and my opinion is immediately disregarded. I once had to name the entire Hearts squad and their shirt numbers before a bloke in a pub would actually engage me in football conversation. The fact that in naming the back five I had hit a higher number than his teeth-count meant nothing, I was still below him in the hierarchy. Over time this has become less of a problem where I sit. I have had the same season ticket for the last 8 years and I often like to fantasise that the fans around go home and refer to me as ‘English guy’ or on a good day ‘good looking English guy’ depending on their sexuality and/or taste. The truth is I probably am, as I always have been no matter how many players names I can spell, “some English c**t.” The singing is where I feel most foreign. Shouting and cheering in English voice is fine but, much to the amusement of my friends, I have to put on an accent for The Hearts Song. If you cannae spell it, just doesn’t sound right with correct grammatical wording.
Darren Anderton. Sadly, Craig's excited clapping at seeing him led to Dazza sustaining a perforated eardrum in the warm-up.2.Not knowing anyone. My first ever game in Scottish football was a pre-season friendly between Hearts and Tottenham. Like most teenagers being told they are moving away from all their friends, I sulked. The bribery was that I could watch regular football at a good standard. Yet another promise that my dad never delivered. We went to the game supporting Spurs as I knew Ginola, Dominguez, Anderton etc. All household names. The only name from my household I recognised on the Hearts shirts was Strongbow. I didn’t know any of them. As three players ran towards us I asked my Dad who they were, all training together and helping each other warm up. We spent a good ten minutes deciphering who they could be and whether they were worth a photo. Turns out they were the match officials. I had to learn quickly who was a good player and who wasn’t and sadly I could be completely misled by one good game in 1999. For instance I had Fabien Leclerq down as a one of the best defenders in the league. Sadly, that was his only good game. Possibly ever. I think I’ve caught up.
Nuno Capucho. Disgracefully celebrating a tap-in as if he'd shifted his a*se at any point during the rest of the match. Craig may have a point...Ed.3.The Fans. Yes, they are Scottish. We have discussed this already but my experience with Scottish football fans is that they tend to be far more self-deprecating. In England if you tell a Chelsea fan his team his shite, you’re in for a potential doing. Scottish fans love to tell you how shite elements of their team are. Even the Old Firm enjoy telling you how useless Nuno Capucho was or what a waste of money Raphael Scheidt was. Let’s be honest, as a non-Old Firm fan, we love to hear it but we also don’t mind chipping in ourselves about our own shortcomings. Scottish fans are also the only fans I have met that take so much enjoyment in their own National team’s failings. As soon as I discovered this level of self-loathing and misery. I knew I would fit right in.
4.It’s more personal. Now this is true of lower league English football too, but my experience down south was the odd Premiership game here and there. Old Firm fans may not quite relate to this one but I like the fact that seeing my team on TV is exciting. In our case, especially in Europe. It feels like a home video. The camera work can be dodgy, someone normally falls over and embarrasses themselves and in our case in Europe, we can earn about 250 quid from it. When we score a goal, you genuinely feel part of it not just that it’s some huge corporation with a stadium full of tourists. Now, this comes with a downside too. At many of the games of a more muted atmosphere, the players can genuinely hear every word. I have absolutely no doubt Hearts fans have played a huge part in the catastrophic failures of Hibs goalkeepers over the years. I also remember on one occasion Jamie McAllister scoring in a league cup fixture and running over to tell a guy to f**k off after hearing his abuse for an entire game. I like that personal touch. And I like Hibs goalkeepers.
Zibi Malkowski, in classic Hibs goalie pose. Dishonourable mentions also to Gottskalksson & Ma Kalambay.5.History . Pre-1999 I have almost no knowledge of Scottish football. My only rivalries and preferences have come since the turn of the millennium. Many Hearts fans hate St Mirren. I don’t. I know the story of course, as it is retold once a week on forums across the country. If St.Mirren hadn’t lost so heavily then Hearts could’ve won the league in 1986. They are commonly referred to as St.Liedown around Tynecastle and the hatred is at times as big as for our rivals. Now, logically I have looked at the record books. If Hearts had won then the St.Mirren score is irrelevant. So, how on Earth are St.Mirren to blame? They weren’t in Dundee! But, I can’t tell Hearts fans that or I am back to being the English pr*ck. It is a difficult tightrope to walk and all credibility can be lost in an instant. However, my lack of knowledge in the club’s history makes me no less of a Jambo than any other person in the ground. Plus, this feels quite cathartic. I thought Stephane Adam was sh*t. I like Coldplay and I think Ricky Gervais is funny. There I’ve done it.
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About the Author Craig started performing comedy in 2010 and has since been scaling the stairs of comedy at the rate of Thora Hird in the Stannah adverts of the 80s. Not content with not setting Scotland alight with his musings, he has since moved to London to barely amuse an entirely new nation. As a student, in 2005 he won the BBC Student Sports Broadcaster of the Year and followed it up in 2006 with the BBC Student Comedy Broadcaster of the Year. In 2007, he was a finalist in BBC Talent’s Witty and Twisted competition and he has written for various blogs including journaling his own trip around the UK exploring Britain’s fascination with curry at www.landofhopandtandoori.co.uk (this is sadly not a joke).
Despite being English, Craig has been a season ticket holder at Hearts for over ten years but can put on a decent accent at away matches so as not to be turned on by the locals. Having only supported Hearts since 2000 when he moved to Scotland, he has the pleasure of not knowing or caring who Albert Kidd is but has had the misfortune of knowing or caring who Eduard Malofeev is.
