Pity the poor ex-pat in a kilt - and an England shirt

Published on Monday 24 November 2003 00:00

USUALLY when England achieve something spectacular in sport, our reaction contains an element, however small, of optimism.

Now England are the world champions of rugby, and we do not greet their triumph with any subjective hope. There will be a spectrum of emotions across Scotland this week, but common to them all will be envy, green as a spring meadow. Our shared broadcasting network means there will be no escape from acknowledging what has happened, and this time we have to face the blunt reality that, in the era of the superpower, we will probably never emulate what our dear old enemies have done.

In these muddy waters of national rivalry, envy takes a variety of forms. Perhaps you found yourself screaming at the television in fury, perhaps you were strong enough to applaud an undoubtedly worthy group of champions, or perhaps you adhered to the Law of Apathy. Denis’s Law, that is, the doctrine created in 1966 when the great Scotland striker went for a round of golf while the Earth was moving for all Englanders at Wembley.

Perhaps you didn’t give a XXXX what was going on in Sydney on Saturday. But for that embittered band of diehard Sassenach haters whose interests transcends sporting boundaries, it has been a sickening five days.

First, our status as a B-list football nation was underlined in graphic detail in Amsterdam, an unwanted instance of history being rewritten as a 0-6 scoreline afflicted Scotland for the first time. The last thing our self-esteem needed was another epoch - England’s sporting might rubber-stamped just as we were trying to come to terms with our own mediocrity.

Whatever Johnny Wilkinson’s masterclass of nerve-control signified to you, to be there was to be in utter thrall of the whole spectacle. The game itself exceeded all expectations of intrigue and drama, but throw in the enchanting aura of three little lads doing full justice to World In Union, the presence of a white army that surely represented the largest sporting pilgrimage of all time, the voyeuristic kick taken from the onset of extra time, and the final catharsis - a leviathan of a man making a famous golden edifice look minute and flimsy in his grasp - and you have an event that was refined to the point of perfection.

Trouble was, it felt like an intrusion to be a Scot with the privilege of seeing it. You could go to a badminton tournament in Bangkok and probably catch sight of a solitary Saltire, as there was draped here, but the only other flash of Caledonia was a tanned man in his 40s wearing an England shirt that was neatly tucked, unthinkably, into a kilt.

Approaching this anomalous creature to investigate the novel combination brought much laughter from his red rose-laden mates, yet drew nothing but a fixed gaze from the man himself. The poor expatriate had evidently lost a very pivotal bet. If so, his night would inevitably have worsened when Jason Robinson scored in the corner to establish a nine-point interval lead, brightened up considerably as Elton Flatley hauled things back with the help of an indisciplined English pack, and then resumed its seemingly pre-ordained path 25 seconds short of sudden-death, as Wilkinson drew back his right foot and held his breath.

TV replays indicated that our friend would not have been the only man suffering an attack of fatalism at this moment: as the pass found its way to the blond fly-half and into the air, Mat Rogers stood utterly statuesque, rooted to the ground he beseeched to swallow him up.

This was such a titanic struggle that it unearthed the fallacy behind two long-running presumptions: that England do not win things (and when they do, they win them without grace) and that Australians cannot take losing. The demise of Australia at the climax of a major event was such a rarity that there was no telling how the nation would react. But barely a seat in the stadium had been vacated as Martin Johnson got his clutches on their cherished "Bill", and none of the Wallabies ran off to sulk.

Similarly, the winners showed none of the self-congratulatory conceit that made some of their amateur predecessors so difficult to be happy for.

The immaculate professionalism of Johnson, Wilkinson and their peers made it very difficult for any Scot present to begrudge the Auld Enemy their moment of glory. Mind you, our rancour is often levelled not at the players but at the media. In Australia, there are already other things on television.