Song by The Macc Lads released in 1990 on their album "The Beer Necessities." It was a sort of pastiche of the football songs that were big in the 80s and 90s, cf. "Tottenham Tottenham" by Chas & Dave, "World in Motion" for the England team at the 1990 World Cup, and then later on, "Come On You Reds" by Manchester United and Status Quo, and "Three Lions" by the Lightning Seeds. I'm sure there's more but I cannot be arsed to try to find them.

"Pissin' down wi' rain, on a Tuesday night.
I stood an' watched me team play like a bag o' shite."

Reportedly they submitted it to be the official team song of (then) 4th Division side Macclesfield Town who were only just keeping out of the Conference. It's basically a paean to supporting a side you know to be truly hopeless but not caring about it. Thus, by lowering one's expectations one is never disappointed.

"Buy us ten pints, and we don't care."

I couldn't help but hum it to myself as I watched, courtesy of BBC iPlayer, the dismal attempts at football that England came to in the World Cup this year. To be fair, they were trying. They were very trying, actually. But they just couldn't seem to put anything together meaningful. They simply flailed around, gave the ball away constantly, and were generally outclassed. In the words of the song, "the goalie is a twit and the striker is a twat." Then there was the defence, which was generally about as threatening to opposing forwards as a soufflé and quite frankly were only saved more by luck than judgement on occasions.

"So what, you scored. Well shut yer fuckin' gobs!
You might've won, but we've got massive nobs!"

In fact, I actually think this should be the new England team song. Three Lions on your shirt? Maudlin self-pitying nonsense (but what do you expect, the Lightning Seeds were from Liverpool.) Oh, we still believe. Thirty, forty, fifty years of hurt. Yeah. But this time, we'll go all the way. Or next time. Or the time after that. Has it not occurred to them that England never win because they don't care enough to develop players at an early stage; Premiership clubs are all too happy to buy in their talent from abroad and the players from abroad like it because they get paid vast sums. Those players of genuine international standing England do have could not care because they're too busy whoring themselves for the press. In fact, the only way that England could win any major international competition now is if they simply fired everyone other than Raheem Sterling and Daniel Sturridge and then hired loads of 18 year olds just coming up through the ranks, such as they are. Okay, they'll be slaughtered at first and vilified in the tabloids. But then that's already happening, and besides, get 'em while they're young and form them into a single cohesive unit rather than cobbling something together as an afterthought. And if "Don't Fear The Sweeper" is the official team song, and 45,000 drunkards in St George's Cross face paint can be persuaded to all belt it out at once, then this should blunt any press criticism.

"Piss your pants, that were a basterd corner
Chuck this pastie at the referee
Fuck off home it were a crap performance
And we should've had a penalty!"

It would also send the message that quite frankly, we don't really see it as such a big thing, and thus foreign teams may be conned into misunderestimating us once our team of former n00bs have got some experience at large-scale play and are actually a force to be reckoned with. And, of course, it'd make history as the first World Cup victory to be won by a team who don't see it as more important than life and death.

I now await my job offer from the FA.