ABSTRACT
The way sport organizes itself in Britain is bewildering to foreigners and sometimes equally bewildering to British nationals. The fact that there is one sovereign state with the Queen as head of that state and a Parliament representing its people is quite clear, but when that state often presents itself as having separate states within it, it is then that faces take on a puzzled look. The problem of understanding is compounded when it is explained that the United Kingdom is not a federated state and that Great Britain does not include the province of Ulster in Northern Ireland where the Queen’s writ is as sovereign as it is in England. Thus the team that represents the British Isles at the Olympic Games is ‘Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ whilst the Commonwealth Games sees teams from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the separate Channel Islands.
