Would be a fresh excuse though

Seen some fanciful reports from England that Australia will join in a boycott. And Poland. Yeah, nah. If England tries it they'll have egg on their faces. They've spent their last 2 years severing themselves from Europe and are frankly delusional about their standing in the world these days. 

Also their threats to bar prince Harry from attending some up their delusion on what the world thinks of the royal family, especially everything that came after Elizabeth.

Zero chance of them being that stupid. I can't believe anyone would take the boycott seriously. 

Probably not. However, the chance just went from Buckley's to slim owing to another suspicious death shortly after the first. There's a lot of anger in Westminster..

Edit. shortly after the first assassination attempt, along with the other 14 suspicious émigré deaths in recent years.

 There will be anger no doubt. One of their own Russian sellout has been murdered. It's the same as if the roles were reversed, then in that case the Russians would be pissed. 
But the bottom line is that the boycott won't happen, because the English football fans don't care about something that means nothing to them and instead care about their national team participating in the world cup that's all that matters. 
Imagine what the English fans would do if their politicians forced England to boycott. They would revolt. 
Zero chance of it happening. It's just a scare tactic that's scared no one but got people talking about it that's all. 
Mrs May is using football as a tool to create more awareness on the matter, even she's not stupid enough to force a boycott.

Getting knocked out before the group stages now, the England way.

 How funny would it be if they actually did pull about lol. Imagine the countries lining up with anticipation at being the chosen ones to take their spot lol

Wtf has thread got to do with australian football? Mods please move to extra time as all im reading is about 911 conspiracy, putin, russians, the english prime minister and the england team

True that. 

It got derailed with talk of 911. The thrust of the thread has got everything to do with the World Cup, however. If there were a World Cup section up and running, I would have put it there.

There is now a slim chance, imo, that the British Government will make the England team boycott the World Cup. There are plenty of articles from the UK press considering and, in some cases, demanding this course of action. As the UK is Australia's oldest ally and its friendship goes far beyond sport. If the British Government makes the England team boycott, then there is a realistic prospect that the Australian Government will make the Socceroos boycott, imo. Our Government will back up theirs as much as possible. Sporting sanctions fall within those boundaries.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/14/russian-spy-attack-theresa-may-to-set-out-possible-reprisals-before-mps

We'll get a clearer idea very soon. Russia didn't respond to Britain's ultimatum of accounting for the poisoning before midnight

Posting an article about the English response, by the english prime minister, that doesn't mention football or the world cup. Tenuous link to Australian football at all. Still think it should be in Extra Time or World Football 

On a cold war scale this level of brinkmanship is as pissweak as Sam Neil's accent in Hunt for Red October

Da, comrade!

NZ were eliminated in 2010 without being defeated.

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Buggalugs 2.0 - 15 Mar 2018 11:24 AM

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quickflick - 14 Mar 2018 8:26 PM

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/14/russian-spy-attack-theresa-may-to-set-out-possible-reprisals-before-mps

We'll get a clearer idea very soon. Russia didn't respond to Britain's ultimatum of accounting for the poisoning before midnight

The UK will expel 23 Russian diplomats after Moscow refused to explain how a Russian-made nerve agent was used on a former spy in Salisbury, the PM says.

Theresa May said the diplomats, who have a week to leave, were identified as "undeclared intelligence officers".

The UK later told the UN Security Council that Russia had used "a weapon so horrific that it is banned in war" in a "peaceful" British city.

Russia denies attempted murder and says it will respond appropriately.

Mrs May also revoked an invitation to Russia's foreign minister, and said the Royal Family would not attend the Fifa World Cup in Russia later this year.

Australia was considering its responses in support of the UK and was closely consulting the UK Government and other partners.
.
"The Australian Government is gravely concerned that a military grade nerve agent developed by Russia has been used in an attack,

We share the UK's outrage over this targeted attempt to commit murder using chemical weapons," Mr Turnbull said.

No ones boycotting sh#t, you’ll play in Russia and you will enjoy it.

May's response was limited to moderate. Although she may want room to maneouvre. She also is trying to gauge how much multilateral support she can count on (which, unfortunately, isn't much). The French tend to be weak when they should be strong. By contrast, they tend to be overzealous and vindictive when they should be measured (e.g. Treaty of Versailles). And Germany gets the vast majority of their power from Russia so they're over a barrel. I'm starting to believe that Putin has something big on Trump so the US will do nothing. I imagine Australia will stand alongside the UK a lot but that's about it.

The only risk of the England team being made to boycott is if the Kremlin does something incredibly antagonising now. That would escalate things. Otherwise it should be business as usual.

If you look to recent precedent, the only mass boycott of a major international sporting event is the 1980 olympics after Russia invaded Afghanistan. Poisoning a double agent is nothing.

If you look to precedent of single teams pulling out of an international event, Israel having half its team murdered in the olympic village is one.

As poster above says, with regards to Skripal, no state is abandoning shit. If the UK want the royal family to boycott the event then my question to them is why would they be that fucking stupid to reward Russia by not having to host that certified fuckwit prince Harry for a month.

It's not just the poisoning of a double agent. It's the first use of a military grade nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War. 

As for the precedent thing, it's very hard to find similar enough analogies because the contexts vary so greatly. The Israeli team were butchered in the Munich Olympics. But it wasn't the Germans who were responsible, it was a Palestinian terrorist group. This is different because participation at the World Cup entails being a guest of the state which carried out the use of the nerve agent on British soil. Huge difference (although I'm not saying it wouldn't have been an appropriate thing for the Munich Olympics to have been called off after the massacre).

I bet that in 1945 world leaders wished they had boycotted the Berlin Olympics. And hell yeah they should have done. It was shameful that they participated. That participation made it far more difficult for Churchill, Eden, Duff Cooper and Amery to oppose Chamberlain's absurd notion of appeasement. Had they boycotted the event, rather than pandering to a despot with designs on territorial expansion, it would have paved the way to stop Hitler when he invaded Sudetenland (or earlier). Not boycotting put them on an appeasement footing which invited Hitler to do as he pleased.

Imagine, giving South Africa the hosting rights for the rugby world cup in 1987. This isn't quite analogous to that as the South African government's crimes then were rather different to the Kremlin's crimes now. But there are similarities insofar as both states stepped so far out of line as for it to be the most offensive thing to give them the privilege of hosting prestige events.

People underestimate the power of these kind of events in tacitly validating despotic leaders' authority. As the Russian Embassy in London correctly points out, every action has an equal or greater reaction. If these kind of events are boycotted, it makes such leaders look weak and implicitly undermines their authority.

Having said all that, owing to the frightening likelihood that Putin has Trump on a string. And since the French are the French and the Germans are dependent on Russian energy... HMG will struggle to get support for strong sanctions. They'd need a strong suit of sanctions for a World Cup boycott to be on the cards.

I feel like this is being blown way out of proportion. Obama blows up weddings and civilians with drone strikes and no one says a peep about boycotting USA, yet we have no conclusive proof of anything and we're all meant to boycott a World Cup? Ridiculous.

I'd have no issue with Obama being sent to The Hague to explain those drone strikes.

There's a sufficiently compelling case that the Kremlin is the guilty party as there's nowhere else this particular nerve agent could reasonably have come from.

True it wouldn't meet the threshold to secure a criminal prosecution. But that's not the standard of proof required here as we're not talking about a criminal prosecution. We're talking about sanctions intended to bite. Russia was given the opportunity to account for how this particular nerve agent went AWOL, they provided no adequate explanation.

It is all a side point. Fact is, these tournaments aren't the Goodwill Games. They're apolitical. Their whole purpose  is to build international community through sport. If nations boycott over politics they are undermining the movement. Even if the principle is correct, they're violating the purpose of the tournament itself. They can piss and moan to the ICC or the UN if they want.

If that's the purpose, the corollary of that is that the world has a giant farking problem when these tournaments can be politically exploited by despotic powers by tacitly endorsing their violations of international law and undermining the international community through sport. That rather defeats the purpose of the tournament, itself.

Hosting a tournament of this magnitude (even competing in a tournament, to a lesser extent) is a privilege, not a human right.

These sort of regimes (and Russia especially since time immemorial) cares a lot about how the world perceives it. Russia craves power and prestige. It wants the West to appreciate (and fear) its power and prestige. Putin believes the biggest tragedy of the last century was the break-up of the Soviet Union because it rendered Russia weak. His goal is to reverse that situation.

We know that banning South Africa during the Apartheid era and embarrassing their leadership undermined them to their people.

Unfortunately some people love to turn a blind eye to all the crimes committed by the leaders of countries they support. 
Putin is hated by the mainstream media and they'll link anything bad with him, yet ignore the crimes that actually are not speculation and in fact actual facts.
Bush deliberately bombed Iraq and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people because of fake made up sources claiming he had WMD. Saddam even cooperated and invited Bush to come and talk and look for himself. 
It was all ignored and the rest is history. Then from their own mouths the Americans admit they made a mistake and there was no real evidence about WMD being hidden in Iraq. 
Bush or America never had any sanctions placed on them for war crimes and although admitting they were wrong still till this day did fuck all to compensate or apologise for their disgusting actions. 
The world cup is for football fans at the end of the day not fuckwit politicians to use it as a tool. It's a tournament that unites fans from 32 nations to watch football and party for a month, yet you got this stupid bitch whinging bitching and moaning to create tension between the fans. As always you'll have dick head fans out there who will take matters in their own hands, and most likely there will be brawls amongst the fans of Russia and England again. And most of it because of the tension this bitch and many others have created. 
Then come 2022 in Qatar what's the bet the bitch won't bring up anything to do with world cup boycotts, even though there's proof/speculation that Qatar funded terrorist groups around the world. 
This whole thing is bullshit. Boycotts won't happen but the politicians will have done their job of putting a bad taste in mouths and creating tension amongst fans. I mean there always is tension either way but this will be extra unwanted tension. 

Can't believe I'm going to say this but I agree.

Qatar can just have their hosting rights stripped of them, too. I think that's what all rational people have been suggesting for a while now. There was a thread about Qatar, specifically, too. Most people who wrote on the thread hardly seemed to think it was just fine for them to host it (although they debated the legal implications of stripping Qatar of the hosting rights).

I'm not talking about people. I'm talking about politicians. Terrorists have committed crimes in so many countries in recent times including London. Not once has May or any other English politician come out and claimed that they will boycott because of the links between Qatar and terrorism. However she's going ape shit about Russia. 

She needed to look tough after Brexit talks were flopping