SS, banter is indeed part and parcel of it all. Being English I fully expect to be ridiculed most of the time. However, I feel that not a lot of people understand what it actually means to a lot of us, so when we get attacked when we've just been knocked out, it's beyond banter, if you know what I mean. Imagine if I'd gone into the India-Aus thread after Sydneygate and chortled about how India had choked. That pretty much sums up how it was for us.
I'm not Australian but I know from speaking with a couple of them that that was how they saw your posts after the Germany game...
Look, just over a year ago, my domestic team lost out on a play-off place in the last minute of the season. I was totally distraught, a grown man being consoled by one of his two-year old daughters is laughably pathetic...but the way everyone in the footy thread responded was amazing, and sympathetic.
Then a few days later, grecian made a joke at my expense about it, and that's all good because I'm not raw anymore...it's the unwritten rule. Me and my sister's bf txt each other footy abuse all the time but when it's massive, there's an unspoken rule that we don't do it.
Maybe it's just me anyway, dunno. Certainly don't have a problem with people telling me my teams are ****...they generally are...timing and awareness are key though, because football is in my blood like so many others here and it does make me act differently to pretty much anything else in the world