England’s National Anthem: God Save The Queen And The Controversy Around It

God Save The Queen is the whole UK's national anthem and not just England. Let's see what is the controversy around England's National Anthem

Playing both the national anthem before the game has been a long-running tradition in sports. While England’s national cricket team uses “Jerusalem” as the national anthem the football team uses “God save the Queen”.FIFA restricts all the national anthems to be under 90 seconds, so only the first paragraph of “God Save The Queen” is sung.  “God save the queen” is the national anthem of the whole UK, some country’s use it and some don’t which is why it has been a talking point in sports for a long time. Let’s read the lyrics and then dig deeper to find out the whole controversy around England’s national anthem “God save the queen”.

God Save The Queen Lyrics

God save our gracious Queen!
Long live our noble Queen!
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen!

O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies,
And make them fall:
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix:
God save us all.

Thy choicest gifts in store,
On her be pleased to pour;
Long may she reign:
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause,
To sing with heart and voice,
God save the Queen!

national anthem

Controversy Around England’s National Anthem

England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales are the four countries that represent the UK in football. Of these four England and Northern Ireland sing God save the queen before matches while Scotland and Wales sing “Flower of Scotland” and “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau”. All the teams not using UK’s national anthem have been talking about it as it makes the national anthem more associated with England than the whole UK.

There have been some nationwide votes to choose the best national anthem with “Jerusalem” coming out as a top contender. During a world cup qualifier in 2005 between Wales and England the Welsh fans booed England’s national anthem which sparked debate. Another similar incident happened in 2017 when the Scottish fans booed England’s national anthem, this time the Scottish Football Association was fined 4000 pounds for the act.

In 2012 some players of the British football team, particularly from Wales and Scotland didn’t sing some parts of God save the queen which brought them a lot of criticism as well.

The debate around God Save the Queen being the national anthem has been going on for a long and it doesn’t seem to end anytime soon. Around every sporting event, the debate sparks again, and given how complicated things are players can expect some chatter around it in the coming years as well.

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