Insult Thy Neighbour

If anything amused me about the whole Joey Barton link with Manchester United non-story, it was the reaction of various United fans on the internet, generally amongst the lines of "I don't care if that Scouse fuck scores a hat trick every game, I don't want to see him in the shirt". You wouldn't get a more extreme response if the club had announced Harold Shipman as the new Club Doctor and hired Fred West to renovate the South Stand.

My own personal response was that putting all other matters aside, he just isn't good enough if the team are set to have any chance on the Mission: Impossible-esque task of getting up to Barcelona standard. Though I did enjoy that his response to Frank Lampard moving tables during an England squad breakfast rather than sit with young Joseph was "I wasn't going to nick your breakfast, you fat prick".

Those other matters, however, seem to be that a) He used to play for Manchester City b) he has been something of a thug in the past and c) He's from the Merseyside area.

All of which reminded me of how in this country we do like our rivalries. I'm from Cumbria, so we didn't like "that lot" down South. I'm from West Cumbria, so we didn't like "that lot" from Carlisle, thinking they saw us as a bunch of rural hicks. Then, I'm from Whitehaven, so we didn't like the "Jam Eaters" (long story) from Workington. It went as far as when I was a young nipper and we moved to a shiny new housing estate, the kids on my street instantly formed a rivalry with those on the next street, which mainly consisted of throwing tiny rocks at each other from a distance of about 100 yards. Well, we were only about six at the time.

I often wonder whether this happens in other countries? Take Liverpool and Manchester - only 30-odd miles apart, yet with very distinctive accents. Joy Division could never have been scousers, but equally the Bunnymen couldn't have been Manc or Salford lads. Is the difference between, say, Dusseldorf and Cologne as wide? I'm not even referring to the extreme kinds of nationalism that we've sadly seen in the last few days, but a need to create any kind of rivarily no matter how small - do the people of this rock in the North Sea just like a scrap (even if only just verbally) that much?