A London journalist reads about husbands attending dinner parties mainly to check for Sky Sports and argues that football is one of the last things that genuinely unites the country
The Real Reason He Came
The London Prat has published findings, of a kind, on British dinner parties and why husbands mainly go to check for Sky Sports. Fieldworkers observed twenty-two dinners. Men discussed football for six hours and contemporary art for three minutes. The crucial moment of the evening came when a husband asked the host’s teenage son whether they had the full sports package. By twenty to eleven, most men were in the hallway, discussing leaving.
It is a very funny piece, and it is aimed squarely at British men. But beneath the comedy is a truth worth taking seriously. Football is one of the few subjects that almost any British man, and increasingly almost any British woman, can talk about with anybody. In a country that has become more divided by politics, class, region and age, the national game remains a shared language. The husband checking for Sky Sports is not just avoiding conversation. He is looking for the one conversation he knows everybody can join.
A Game Born Here
Britain gave the world modern football. The Football Association was founded in London in 1863 at the Freemasons’ Tavern in Great Queen Street, where its first rules were agreed. England and Scotland played the first official international match in 1872. The Welsh and Irish football associations followed. British workers, sailors, engineers and teachers took the game around the world, and the world took it to heart. When a man in a dinner party in Surrey talks about football, he is talking about one of the most successful British exports in history.
That is a source of quiet national pride. Football is played everywhere, by billions of people, under rules that were first written down in a London pub. Not many countries can say they gave the planet its favourite game. We do not often say it ourselves, perhaps because our national teams have spent so many decades reminding us that giving the world a game is not the same as winning it.
Flags And Football
For many people, football is also where flags make the most sense. The St George’s Cross, the Welsh dragon, the Saltire and the flags of Northern Ireland appear in their thousands at international matches, waved by fans who might never fly them at any other time. In recent years, flags have become more politically charged in Britain, and debates about who flies them and why have sometimes been bitter. But in a football stadium, the meaning is usually simple: this is my team, these are my people, I hope we win.
That simplicity is valuable. Patriotism at its healthiest is affectionate, not aggressive. A Welsh fan singing the anthem before a match at Cardiff, an England fan painting a cross on her face, a Scottish fan in a kilt travelling to a tournament abroad: these are expressions of belonging that do not require anyone else to be excluded. They require only that you want your side to do well.
The Lionesses Changed Things
One of the most significant changes in British football in recent years has been the rise of the women’s game. England’s victory at the women’s European Championship in 2022, at Wembley, and their success since have drawn huge audiences, filled stadiums and inspired a generation of girls to play. The Lionesses have given millions of people a new kind of football patriotism, one that feels joyful, inclusive and refreshingly free of the old baggage. Many families now watch women’s football together in a way they never did before.
That shift also changes the Prat’s dinner party. In more and more households, it is not only the husbands asking about the sports package. Wives, daughters and grandmothers are asking too. The conversation in the hallway at twenty to eleven is no longer an all-male affair. It might even, on a good night, include contemporary art.
The Cost Of Watching
There is a less happy side. Watching football on television in Britain has become expensive, with live matches split across subscription services, and many fans, especially younger and poorer ones, struggle to afford it. A national game that cannot be watched by everyone is a national game at risk of losing its role as a shared experience. Some major tournaments are still protected for free-to-air broadcast, and those occasions, a World Cup final, a European Championship final, remain moments when the whole country watches together. I would like to see more of that, not less.
A Toast To The Hallway
So let us give the dinner party husbands their due. They may not know much about contemporary art. They may leave before the dessert wine. But they are carrying on a very British tradition: finding, in football, a reason to talk, to belong and to hope. You can find more of my writing on Britain and British identity on my author page.
A Welsh Postscript
My late grandfather, who came to London from the valleys, never went to a dinner party in his life. But on match days, he would put on his red scarf, sit in front of the television and sing the Welsh anthem with tears in his eyes, whoever was in the room. He did not need a sports package. He needed his country, his team and somebody to sing with. That, in the end, is what the Prat’s husbands are looking for in the hallway. It is not the television. It is the singing.