As they say in France: ils en ont fait tout un fromage. The first great outrage of the Rugby World Cup turned out to be not some hotly disputed try, nor a game-changing red card issued from the TMO bunker, but the singing of the national anthems. These were, depending on which former player you asked, “terrible” (Brian O’Driscoll), “butchered” (Andy Goode), and “a shambles” (Rob Kearney). Such was the ire they aroused from fans in the stadiums that one week into the tournament they have been ditched, consigned to the graveyard of failed musical experiments where they will quietly return to dust alongside Kiss’s orchestral concept album and Elton John’s disco phase.
Let’s be clear: this wasn’t the kids’ fault. There was nothing musically suspect about the voices of the young children who made up the various cappella choirs that provided the backing tracks. La Marsellaise, while an absolute banger, is a marching tune that demands a loud and discernible downbeat, especially if you’re going to keep 80,000 voices singing along in time. A vocal ensemble of prepubescents also, by nature, lacks the deep resonant bass that provides a necessary melodic anchor, which is why Joe Marler struggled, so very audibly, to stay in key during England’s pre-match routine against Argentina.
But sports fans are passionately protective of their big singalong. The RWC tournament chairman, announcing plans to replace the offending versions, admitted that national anthems were a “sensitive question”. As if to prove him right, Scotland then played England at football in a friendly at Hampden Park, and the home crowd booed so loudly over God Save The King that it could only be heard as a supersonic vibration in Jude Bellingham’s right boot.
It’s no surprise that national anthems are an emotive subject: they are composed, and employed, precisely to evoke strong feelings. They are love song, hymn of praise and battle cry combined: if they don’t lift the chest, set the jaw and inflate the lungs, if they don’t bring a lump to the throat or a tear to the eye, they’ve failed their purpose. They’re also unashamedly tribal. Whether used as a call to arms ahead of the action, or in the triumphant post-victory flag-raising, their presence is a reminder of the conflict-by-proxy that dominates sport’s very identity. It’s the same reason a group of educated, cultured and otherwise intelligent folk can claim the presence of EU flags at the Last Night of the Proms ruin their experience of Rule, Britannia!
It was rugby union’s All Blacks who inadvertently began the tradition of anthem-singing before matches in a game against Wales in 1905, when the rival team responded to their haka with a rendition of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau (Land of My Fathers), and the crowd joined in. In some ways, these songs have found their truest home in the sporting world; their blend of nostalgia and hope can exist both as escapist fantasy, and as a symbol of powerful protest, like that of Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Colin Kaepernick. There’s no reason for pundits and commentators to treat them as sacred, or expect them to be heard in silence.
I suspect, anyway, their endurance in the modern age is less a commentary on the patriotic impulse and more a simple proof of the love of communal singing. As a liberal worrier keen to avoid the imperialistic overtones of my own country’s ode to its monarch – not to mention someone who loves to belt out a tune – I will happily sing every anthem I can learn the words to. If it happens that Flower of Scotland, Ireland’s Call, and Advance Australia Fair all have better tunes than God Save The King, that’s just a bonus.
• Emma John is an Observer columnist
