@HS - Glad we're still talking - Google hits (real results - not first page figures - 'when' versions are to make sure they're not following modals or other constructions which might skew the results):

"Scotland are playing England" - 29 (-1, which is your comment)
"Scotland is playing England" - 26
"when Scotland are playing England" - 21
"when Scotland is playing England" - 13
"when Scotland play England" - 58
"when Scotland plays England" - 17
"Scotland have played England" - 22
"Scotland has played England" - 0

"Scotland have played England 108 times" - The Guardian
"The only previous occasion Scotland have played England at the World Cup was the 1991 semi-final at Murrayfield" - The BBC
"Since the war Scotland have played England 24 times at Twickenham" - The Herald
"As far as stats go, since 1873 Scotland have played England 104 times." - The Spectator
"Over the past 100 years, Scotland have played England amateur teams or the MCC" - The Scotsman

At the British National Corpus ( BNC), the computerised collection of English texts probably most used by linguists:

"England play" - 16 (minus perhaps 3 for constructions that take a bare infinitive)
"England play" - 1 (and that's a red herring - "the Bank of England plays a predominant role in the gilt-edged market")
"England beat" - 18, "England beats" - 0
"England lose" - 7, "England loses" - 0
"England win" - 9, "England wins" - 1

http://bnc.bl.uk/saraWeb.php?qy=England+play&mysubmit=Go
http://www.just-the-word.com/main.pl?word=England&mode=combinations (go down to
*England* subj V)

Not so much the commentators' trap as what most Brits would say, me included. And we're not in the slightest confused.

Something interesting happens when pronouns are involved - these are from the BNC:

"By the time England play their first World Cup qualifying match in October"
"If England play the direct game, they will worry us"
"I have never seen England play better than they did against Ireland"

Perhaps you would prefer:

"By the time England plays its first World Cup qualifying match in October"
"If England plays the direct game, it (England) will worry us"
"I have never seen England play better than it did against Ireland"

It? For a team? Now that would be a bit strange, wouldn't it?

@HS - Not sure what your last comment is meant to mean.

Firstly, about nuances, no British speaker thinks twice about this; it comes automatically, we do this instinctively. I was simply showing how it worked. As for choir, you'll find the answer further up the page.

What you do is entirely up to you: that's the beauty of the system, and I have absolutely no complaint about people using singular verbs with collective nouns if they want to, regardless of how unnatural it sometimes sounds to me.

What I do question, however, is when somebody repeatedly calls something which is absolutely standard in British English, copiously covered in grammar books and usage guides, a 'misuse' or 'incorrect', against all the evidence provided, without themselves offering a shred of evidence to support this position. I may not remember much from my English classes, but that's certainly not how I was taught to present an argument.
:)

@HS - The first three yes (but singular verbs would be equally correct - you have a choice), the last two, no. It's a lot subtler than just singular or plural; rather the application of logic (semantic, rather than grammatical).

And it's not me who's telling you. It's just about every commentator on British English from the last century or so. I challenge you to find any reputable source that says anything different. By the way, I've read that Australians follow the Americans on this one, so maybe it's the same in New Zealand.

So let's look at your examples:

""The Government are convinced" - Yes, it's government ministers who are convinced.

"The Government are convinced that the above measures will lead to a strong balance of payments" - James Callaghan 1967. According to Wikipedia, this use of the plural is especially common in political circles as it reinforces collective responsibility.

"The crowd are on their feet" - Yes, it's the members of the crowd who are their feet - "is on its feet" would sound quite weird to me here. How many feet does a crowd have?

"The crowd were on their feet again on the half hour as Wilson scored the opener." - Irish Independent

"The herd are lowing" - Yes, it's the individual cattle that are lowing - but in "The herd is one of the largest in this part of the country" - we see herd as an entity and so use a singular verb.

"The herd are lowing far across the field" - The Lady of Dardale (poem) - to be honest, pretty hard to come by, but then so is the 'is' version (mainly North American, including one from Leonard Cohen).

"The RBS are closed" - No, it makes no sense. It's not the people who are closed. But "The RBS is/are recruiting new staff" - Yes. It's people at the RBS who have made the decision to recruit.

"The East India Company were a famous organisation" - No, of course not, because you are talking about it as an organisation, not people 'doing things like deciding, hoping or wanting' (Swan), so of course it's 'was'. Even with a plural noun we can use a singular verb when talking of it as an organisation - "Clifton Cub Scouts is one of the oldest Cub Scout Packs in the country" - 'are' seems to be also possible but is outnumbered 3 to 1 by 'is' on Google in this particular construction.

But in "many other European countries had their own trading companies, but the East India company were (or was) the first to trade globally on any significant organised scale" - It was people who did the trading, so a plural verb is fine.

@HS - "Manchester United is a great club." - Sorry, but that's a straw man argument, because yes, of course, we are talking about the club as an entity here, and nobody has suggested that you use a plural verb when using a collective noun to talk about an entity.

But when we say "United are playing well today", we're talking about the players, so most Brits (according to most accounts) seem happier to use a plural here.

@Thoughtless - I'll leave that one to a Southerner to answer, but for some Scots it's 'yous' - 'See yous all later, then'

@Funslinger - my remarks apply only to British English. I realise Americans intuitively think using formal agreement, and find notional agreement hard to take. Incidentally, were in 'If I were you' isn't a plural verb, as the subjunctive mood (not case - that's for nouns and pronouns) has only one form for both singular and plural.

By the way, notional agreement is also usually used with the expression 'a number of':

A number of incidents have happened in the last few weeks. - accent on incidents
The number of incidents has increased recently. - accent on number

@HS - "You can post as many examples of misuse as you choose, they do not change the facts." - What facts, pray? Since when was grammar about facts? And if we're quoting 'facts', how about some references?

You dismiss my quotes, but say nothing about my grammar references. So just to make sure, I can assume that all the following people are/were wrong then:

Henry W Fowler (author of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage)
Robert Burchfield in the third edition of Fowler's
Eric Partridge (author of Usage and Abusage)
Sir Ernest Gowers (author of Plain Words)

Here's Gowers - 'In using collective words or nouns of multitude (Department, Parliament, Government, Committee and the like), ought we to say "the Government have decided" or "the Government has decided"; "the Committee are meeting" or "the Committee is meeting"? There is no rule; either a singular or plural verb may be used. The plural is more suitable when the emphasis is on the individual members, and the singular when it is on the body as a whole. "A committee was appointed to consider this subject"; "the committee were unable to agree". '
(http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/gowerse/complete/chap904.htm)

Fowler specifically mentions flock, incidentally, - 'it may be treated as singular or plural'. And even the rather stricter New Zealander Eric Partridge agrees - "'Such collective nouns as can be used either in the singular or in the plural . . . are singular when unity (a unit) is intended; plural, when the idea of plurality is predominant.'

And Oxford Dictionaries Online - "Generally speaking, in Britain it is more usual for collective nouns to be followed by a plural verb, while in the US the opposite is true."
David Crystal - probably the leading expert on British English
(http://www.davidcrystal.com/?id=2829)

The British Council - Learning English (ditto)
BBC Learning English
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv358.shtml)
University College London Linguistics Department (see link above)
Michael Swan - one of the leading British writers on grammar and usage for foreign learners and their teachers (ditto)
Raymond Murphy, author of the most popular grammar exercise book for foreign learners
Macmillans Dictionary (see reference above)
OneStopEnglish - Macmillans' EFL site (ditto)
Randolph Quirk and Sidney Greenbaum, authors of 'The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language' - highly influential reference grammar published in the 80s

So to sum up: the use of plural verbs with collective nouns was thought to be absolutely standard by the three grand old men of twentieth century British English commentary - Henry Fowler, Ernest Gowers and Eric Partridge, not to mention virtually every other commentator on British grammar. Those are 'the facts'.

I find it really hard to believe that teachers fifty years ago were going completely against Fowler, Partridge and particularly against Gowers, whose 'Plain Words' was probably the most influential book on British English in the post-war years.

And yet you call it a 'misuse'. Sorry, Hairy, but pull the other one! I leave the rest of you to judge for yourselves.

@HS - then I'm afraid you've got a bit out of touch with British English and have started thinking more like an American. Now there's a bombshell indeed!

Virtually every grammar book we use with students points out this difference, as do websites that show the differences between British and American English. From my 'bible', Practical English Usage, by Michael Swan:

'In British English, singular words like family, team, government, which refer to groups of people, can be used with either singular or plural verbs and pronouns.

This team is/are going to lose.

Plural forms are common when the group is considered as a collection of people doing things like deciding, hoping or wanting; and in all these cases we use who, not which, as a relative pronoun

The firm are wonderful. They do all they can for me.
The firm was founded in the 18th century.

Examples of group nouns which can be used with both singular and plural verbs in British English:

bank, the BBC, choir, class, club, committee, England (the football team), family, firm, government, jury, ministry, orchestra, party, school, staff, team, union' - Practical English Usage, by Michael Swan

I understand this being new to Americans, but I'm a little surprised that you were unaware of this very standard feature of British English. So if you still maintain that using a plural with team is incorrect, I'm afraid you're rather out of kilter with standard grammar teaching, and standard practice:

'Subject-verb agreement. In British English, collective nouns (referring to groups of people) are often followed by a plural verb even when the noun is singular. This does not occur in American English. For example:

British English: The football team are rather weak this year.
American English: The football team is very weak this year.

Other common collective nouns that often take a plural verb in British English are: army, company, jury, audience, crowd, majority, class, enemy, staff, committee, government and union.' - Macmillan English Dictionaries

"Verb agreement with collective nouns - In British English collective nouns, (i.e. nouns referring to particular groups of people or things), (e.g. staff , government, class, team) can be followed by a singular or plural verb depending on whether the group is thought of as one idea, or as many individuals" - OneStopEnglish - major EFL site

"Formal and notional agreement - In British English (BrE), collective nouns can take either singular (formal agreement) or plural (notional agreement) verb forms, according to whether the emphasis is on the body as a whole or on the individual members respectively; compare a committee was appointed with the committee were unable to agree. The term the Government always takes a plural verb in British civil service convention, perhaps to emphasize the principle of cabinet collective responsibility. Compare also the following lines of Elvis Costello's song "Oliver's Army": Oliver's Army is here to stay / Oliver's Army are on their way . Some of these nouns, for example staff, actually combine with plural verbs most of the time." - Wikipedia

"Collective nouns like jury, team, family, government etc., can take both singular and plural verbs in British English. In American English they normally take a singular verb.T" - The British Council

You might have heard that there's a little fuss going on in Britain about Pfizer at the moment:

"Pfizer are serious and they've got a lot of money to spend. They'll need first-class people doing first-class research," - GlaxoSmithKline boss Sir Richard Sykes

‘They hadn’t had anything new out of Sandwich for ten years, and Pfizer are not a company to reinforce failure,’ said Mr Bragg - in the Daily Mail

"Pfizer are said to have given undertakings to the UK Government as they increase the money they are offering the AstraZeneca shareholders," - Allan Black, GMB national officer for the chemicals industry.

And then there's the banks:

"RBS have been awarded 'Best Mortgage Lender Scotland' in the 2013/14 Your Mortgage Awards."- Royal Bank of Scotland

"The Bank of England have kept interest rates on hold at 0.5%." ITV

"Barclays are founding members of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) " Barclays Bank

And companies:

"Ahead of an exciting summer of football, Vauxhall are giving England fans the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of their footballing heroes" - The FA

And relating to companies:

"That this House will hear the Cause wherein the East India Company are Appellants" - House of Lords - 1691

"The preamble also observes that the East-India Company are possessed of and entitled to the Capital Stock of ..." - Alexander Dalrymple, 1772

"Moreover, the Bank of England are liable to have Cash demanded of them" - House of Lords, 1796

"Cause wherein Richard Hotchkis is Appellant, and the Royal Bank of Scotland are Respondents" - House of Lords 1796

Correction - If a singular noun must take a singular verb then surely by the same token a plural noun must take a plural verb.

@Funslinger - before telling us 'Europeans' what is and isn't proper, or that our practice is ludicrous, you might like to check a grammar book. North Americans use formal agreement, i.e. a singular noun takes a singular verb. In Britain, we also use formal agreement when the noun is seen as a single entity, for example, the Ford Motor company is one of the biggest corporations in the world.

But we often see the entity as a group of people and then use something called notional agreement or synesis. I know this sounds strange to American ears, but it is absolutely standard in British English, and is well understood by linguists and grammarians. It was apparently also used in Classical Latin and Greek.

"The family are coming to stay with us at Christmas" - my family are made up of individuals, so I see them as a group. On the other hand, when I see the family as a unit, I use a singular verb - "The family is the mainstay of the social system".

There is nothing improper about it, it's just a different way of thinking, that's all. And in fact Americans are quite used to it the other way around - "The United States is the world's leading power". If a singular noun must take a singular verb then surely by the same token a plural verb must take a plural verb. But of course nobody says "The United States are ..." because although it's a plural noun, it's a single entity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesis
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/function/notion.htm
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Notional+agreement

And it goes back a long way:

"Then the young Couple are set at Table" - Adam Olearius and others - 1669

"then all the Family are like to be crushed with the same ruine" - Jeremy Taylor - 1673

"The couple are usually prevented from marrying earlier by one or several reasons" - Hubert McDermott - 1693

"every time the Family are call'd together to Prayers" - Thomas Bray - 1697

"In the mean while the Young Couple are lead to a Room with a fine Bed in it ; where they are shut in, and left to their liberty," - Christoph Frick - 1700