DUBLIN

NEWS THAT ENGLAND manager Lee Carsley will not be singing the English National Anthem at the coming Ireland-England football match in Dublin, has led to calls for anthems to be dispensed with and everyone in the stadium to come together and sing Ooh Aah Up the Ra, which has become popular among young people across Ireland in recent years.

Carsley, though born in Birmingham, played his international football for Ireland. “He didn’t sing The Soldier’s Song then, perhaps because he couldn’t,” says sports writer Ed Dunce Batty. “Hardly anyone who plays for Ireland can. Indeed, hardly anyone in Ireland can sing the national anthem and even those who can, most of them don’t understand it. It’s the essential contradiction of the nation. We aspire to be Irish, we actually live as English; or American really because the English are now a mere addendum of the American. It’s the way we like it. The rugby heads sing Ireland’s Call, a kind of bland cross-community dirge designed to appease British Ulster Unionists when they play for Ireland. Carsley really should have said he would sing and then done a *John Redwood. Make fish movements with his mouth. Personally, given the history between the nations, and the time that’s in it, I think Roll With It by Oasis would be more appropriate.”

With calls for him to be sacked before he has even led the team into his first game as manager, supporters of the beleaguered England boss are suggesting a compromise.

“How about the Irish sing our anthem in Irish and the English sing the Irish anthem in Cornish and then we all sing Monty Python’s Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life? in German,” said a fan who wished to remain anonymous.

*British Conservative Minister for Wales who once painfully moved his lips in perfect goldfish fashion during the singing of the Welsh anthem – ED