'Decent' men of English rugby end 16 years of hurt

Published on Sunday 23 November 2003 00:00

IT’S WORTH making some noise when you finally end the pain of nearly four decades of near misses. English sport, that institution of chronic underachievement, has suddenly found people who know how to win. Yesterday, Sydney was throbbing to the celebrations accompanying the discovery.

The Telstra Stadium, once known for the Olympics, now named after a telephone company, was the crucible of that knowledge. And there were plenty who saw it happen. This was a corner of suburban Sydney that was victim to an English invasion.

In years to come, we will see that familiar syndrome of sport, where ten times as many claim to have been there as actually were. My guess is that half the stadium were wearing the colours of the visitors, possibly marginally fewer. That still suggests some 40,000 England fans occupying Australian soil. Little wonder Martin Johnson thanked the supporters so vociferously.

With rain tumbling down and the pitch skiddy, with the ball bouncing from hand to hand and the forwards dominating, the stadium sat agog. Only sporadically did we hear Swing Low Sweet Chariot or Waltzing Matilda being bellowed out. This was simply too tense, too engrossing, too damned wearing.

I don’t think I have ever felt so exhausted watching a sporting event. It wrung every ounce of nervous energy from me, from the drama of an early try, to Ben Kay’s extraordinary failure to score, to Elton Flatley’s remarkable resilience, and then to Jonny Wilkinson’s last-gasp drama. Jonny. It had to be Jonny.

You will, I fear, now have to become accustomed to even more of Jonny, of his kicking, his smile, his image plastered everywhere. He is the David Beckham of this sport, not merely in the minds of marketers and headline-writers, but in the way things just happen to him. I was there at Old Trafford 18 months ago when Beckham scored against Greece in the last minute to take England to the World Cup. And now, I can say I was there when Wilkinson did the same sort of trick. Except this time, England actually won something.

The noise, of course, was deafening. The emotion overwhelming. Even Jonny looked happy, and then he looked surprised, as if his own delight had come as a shock.

It is easy in such times for the rest of us to fall prey to hyperbole, so let’s tread carefully here. But I think it is true to say this is an achievement of great importance, something that everybody can cherish. Not just because a British team has won the cup, nor that it is at last crossing from the bottom of the world and going to the top. It is something to do with the people who won it, and what they stand for.

England’s squad are a decent bunch of people. The likes of Josh Lewsey, Ben Cohen, Jason Leonard, Iain Balshaw - these are genuinely engaging characters, blokes you’d have a drink with.

In other words, they feel so very different from the image most footballers have come to represent over the past few years. On the one hand, we have people who have become the best in the world by training relentlessly, yet retain the level-headedness to acknowledge their supporters as their emotional crux; on the other, players who increasingly come to represent a streak of overpaid self-importance.

It is naive, I suppose, to hope that rugby could, even for a short time, replace football in the national affections, but I hope this victory will at least reverberate.

But at the Telstra last night, it was about visceral emotions. After the game, I was hugged variously by a man dressed as Santa Claus, a man in a Mexican hat, and a man wearing little more than paint on his chest. The English are a reserved nation, yet here they celebrated like children. And most of them weren’t even drunk at this point.

Later, of course, they partied and slowly collapsed into delighted heaps. And alongside them, Australians. Most of us, I suspect, thought the Aussies would begrudge an England victory; in fact, there were handshakes, applause and gracious praise. That, perhaps, the most extraordinary sight of all, another stereotype put in the bin. "Painful to lose," said the man next to me, bedecked in green and gold, "but what a game."

Or perhaps not. Sports journalists are supposed to be impartial, and they tend to be cynical. But for once, a victory to report, a World Cup to hold, and a warm glow to preserve.

And even if you could never bring yourself to back England, there is some good news - now they’ve finally won a World Cup, those hoary old pictures of the 1966 final might finally get put to the back of the cupboard. The bugbear of failure has finally tumbled off.