We stand on guard … but why bother before a game? (Globe and Mail)

From The Globe and Mail:

by ROY MacGREGOR
From Monday's Globe and Mail


After recent boorish behavopr in Montreal and Philadelphia towards National Anthems of the U.S. and Canada, Roy MacGregor writes of a point raised in a recent letter to a Montreal newspaper editor by a Richard Samuelson.

“Why,” he asks in a letter to the Montreal Gazette last week, “are national anthems played before sporting events?”

It doesn't happen before concerts or live theatre. Doesn't happen, any more, before the movie starts.

“Millions of Canadians and Americans start work every day without the benefit of national anthems,” he writes. “Why can't jocks?”

MacGregor continues: "How different it is down here at the World Championships....They come out onto the ice and, rather than the game beginning with the anthems of the two countries, as is done in the NHL, the players merely salute the other side by raising their sticks in respect. The game is played – in, it seems, about half the time it takes to play an NHL game with all those commercial breaks and tedious intermissions – and at the end the winning team's flag is briefly raised while that country's anthem is played and the fans of the winning side, also from the same country, join in on the singing....The other team stands on its blueline, respectfully".


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