By Philip O'Connor

GELENDZHIK, Russia, July 6 (Reuters) - On that point bequeath be miscellaneous emotions for many Swedes when their squad crash with England in their Mankind Loving cup quarter-final, for almost 50 geezerhood they hold had a honey function with the English gamey that has brightened up their long, morose winter evenings.

And PokerQQ they make an outbreak of an agrarian disease and a cancelled Fox hunting to thank for it.

In 1967 newsman Lars-Gunnar Bjorklund from state of matter broadcaster SVT was in England to do a account roughly flim-flam hunting, simply an eruption of foot-and-speak disease saw whole hunt cancelled, so he went to check Tottenham Harry Hotspur gaming Chelsea alternatively.

Due to the rough winters, Sweden's football league is usually played from April to October. Bjorklund apace accomplished that English football would be the consummate amusement for foresightful winter evenings, and the "Tipsextra" reveal was Born.

The first of all game, a 1-0 victory for Wolverhampton Wanderers over Sunderland, was shown on Nov 29, 1969 and TV audience in Sweden speedily took teams equivalent Wolves, Due west Bromwich Albion and Leeds Conjunctive to their hearts.

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

Though play was tightly regulated in 1969, hundreds of thousands of Swedes filled in a pools voucher known as "Stryktipset" every workweek where they time-tested to foreshadow the compensate result - nursing home win, absorb or out win - in 13 matches.

GOAL FLASHES

These matches became the groundwork of Tipsextra, with TV audience spell-bound by unmatched last equate every Saturday and destination flashes from round England's cover sectionalization.

"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 in that respect were simply two channels to take from in Sweden, in that location was small contest.

"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 volition be masking Sweden's quarter-last against England from the closet box.

"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."

The arrival of Bobfloat Henry Oscar Houghton and early England coach Roy Hodgson as coaches in Kingdom of Sweden in the mid-1970s merely served to beef up the bonds with English people football, which are unruffled as potent nowadays.

With the globose popularity of the Premiere League, fans with cable length TV and a broadband connexion tail end check nigh whatever halting they want, so it is improbable that any body politic testament ever crepuscle in honey again the direction the Swedes did with English football.

"Young people these days know a lot about football, but a lot of that is via the FIFA video game - we knew a lot about English football because it was all we saw," Esk said. (Reporting by Philip O'Connor Redaction by Amlan Chakraborty)

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