The patriot game: Football’s famous ‘tartan army’. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37

sporting context? This article seeks to demonstrate that these contemporary questions among others, relating to Scotland and Scottish identity, can be explored through the medium of the most popular sport in Scotland. Further, in an environment where everyone ‘volunteers ’ their Scottishness, the per-ceived cause of the Scottish international team can be utilized to investigate some of the social, cul-tural and political complexities that lie underneath an image of oneness. This article concludes that, through the complexity of the Scottish national football side’s supporters, we find that popular notions of Scotland can often be incomplete and consideration requires to be given to ethnic, religious and geographical factors in any sociological thesis relating to contemporary Scottish identity. Key words • culture • football • identity • nationalism • politics This paper uses Scottish international football to partly explore expressions of Scottishness and to recognize what might be general, shared or typical amongst those supporters who regularly follow the Scottish international team. This ‘Tartan Army ’ of Scottish supporters is commonly viewed as among the most vociferous, loyal, entertaining and best behaved of international football sup-porters