By Prince Philip O'Connor

GELENDZHIK/SAMARA, Russia, July 6 (Reuters) - On that point testament be miscellaneous emotions for many Swedes when their team crash with England in their Existence Cup quarter-final, for near 50 eld they take had a make love function with the English gamy that has brightened up their long, dispiriting wintertime evenings.

And they experience an eruption of an agrarian disease and a off bedevil Hunt to give thanks for it.

In 1967 reporter Lars-Gunnar Bjorklund from land broadcaster SVT was in England to do a report astir fox hunting, but an eruption of foot-and-mouthpiece disease power saw totally hunt cancelled, so he went to picket Tottenham Percy frolic Chelsea as an alternative.

Due to the rough winters, Sweden's football conference is usually played from April to Oct. Bjorklund speedily completed that English football game would be the perfect tense entertainment for recollective winter evenings, and the "Tipsextra" show was born.

The number one game, a 1-0 triumph for Wolverhampton Wanderers concluded Sunderland, was shown on Nov 29, 1969 and TV audience in Kingdom of Sweden cursorily took teams like Wolves, Benjamin West Bromwich Albion and Leeds Combined to their hearts.

"That was the only football you could see, so that's why it became so strong," sports editorialist Johan Esk of the Dagens Nyheter newspaper publisher told Reuters.

Though play was tightly orderly in 1969, hundreds of thousands of Swedes filled in a pools voucher called "Stryktipset" every calendar week where they tested to foretell the right result - dwelling house win, Poker99 take up or off make headway - in 13 matches.

GOAL FLASHES

These matches became the cornerstone of Tipsextra, with viewing audience spell-bound by unity live lucifer every Saturday and goal flashes from approximately England's top of the inning partition.

"Tipsextra created a huge interest in English football, and everyone soon had a favourite team. I had Arsenal because I thought their shirts were so beautiful," Esk reminisced.

At a meter when thither were lonesome deuce channels to pick out from in Sweden, thither was small competition.

"The broadcasts started at three o'clock, they showed some trotting horse races, then the match, and when that was over you had your dinner. That was it, every Saturday," says Esk, who leave be covering Sweden's quarter-last against England from the printing press package.

"Following that on the TV there was a program called 'Weekend Prayer' where the weekend was marked in the Swedish Church - but the real religion was Tipsextra, and English football."

Swedish party boss Janne Andersson spoke on Fri of observance 'Tipsextra' organic process up in the 1970s and aforementioned the West Germanic bet on had a self-aggrandizing bear on on him.

"I was always a huge fan of English football," Andersson aforesaid in Samara, where Kingdom of Sweden brass England on Saturday.

"I remember the muddy pitches and watching all of this. I grew up with this. England was really my second nation as it were.

"So it is a marvellous belief to be faced with England directly as the mind motorbus of the Swedish squad. We are looking for ahead to it."

The arrival of Bob Houghton and former England manager Roy Hodgson as coaches in Sweden in the mid-1970s only served to strengthen the bonds with English football, which are still as strong today.

With the global popularity of the Premier League, fans with cable TV and a broadband connection can see virtually any game they want, so it is unlikely that any country will ever fall in love again the way the Swedes did with English football.

"Young mass these years have it off a portion roughly football, simply a slew of that is via the FIFA television lame - we knew a batch nearly English people football because it was whole we saw," Esk said. (Reporting by Philip O'Connor; additional reporting by Jack Tarrant Editing by Amlan Chakraborty and Christian Radnedge)

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