Jim: Surely you can see the difference between the emotional solidarity of a crowd who have turned up to watch THEIR team play a football match, which is their main purpose & the singing an incidental means to reinforce their fidelity to their team [an emotional feeling, believe me, even if you yourself have been, as you say, inoculated against football as an experience]; and a crowd of students who have come to self-consciously* demonstrate their 'studentiness' by sending up the emotions of a song expressing a now-dated patriotism? To put it briefly, the Liverpudlians are singing YNWA with utmost seriousness; the students singing LOHAG are doing the exact opposite.

If you really can't see a distinction, then I have done.

~M~

* This an instance where I think even Fowler would have agreed that a split infinitive best expresses the semantic intention.