Five days and counting …
Hot on the back of the unexpected – I’m not going to say unintended – news that the Rust’s contingent of correspondents in Japan for the final ten days of the Rugby World Cup have been nominated for a special Pullitzer Prize for Best Foreign Coverage of a Global Event, today I thought I’d contribute a snapshot of incidents that I have either been party to or come across recently as the hours tick away towards the Final on Saturday.
For a nation whose principle sport is football there’s no getting around the fact that the FIFA World Cup is the ultimate Holy Grail and that, whatever happens in other sports, England’s winning of the Jules Rimet trophy at Wembley on 30th July 1966 – not least because it happened on home soil – will forever remain our greatest-ever achievement unless and until ‘our boys’ ever repeat the triumph.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s Olympic glory for our track cyclists, sailors, 4 x 100 metre relay runners or female hockey players, or a World Cup or world championship in any other discipline, nothing in sport matters more than winning at men’s football in British popular consciousness.
Whilst in my youth under protest I occasionally played the oval ball game and do not ordinarily follow it, the one thing I will give rugby [the union, not league, variety – I must admit to having had scant exposure to the latter] is that even dippers-in like me can acknowledge that the sheer effort required and extreme physical contract involved is to be admired, albeit perhaps preferably from at a safe distance.
Rugby is certainly not a sport for the faint-hearted among us – as is all too apparent from the tackles, hits, blood and guts occasionally spilled which its participants take as all part of a game’s experience; the degree of ‘all for one, one for all’ necessarily involved in determining the outcome of a contest; and yet also the crucial importance of leadership involved in prompting swings in fortune during the course of one.
When George Orwell offered the opinion that “Sport is war without the shooting”, it would have been odd if he didn’t have rugby in mind at the time.
Upon war being declared in 1914 it was entirely in keeping with rugby’s culture, team-bonding and self-image that the RFU called for its players to set an example to the nation by being first to take up arms.
Rightly or wrongly, it was taken for granted that rugby players – the kind to go fearlessly into battle on a field of play whatever the potential odds – would naturally be able to transfer those attributes to the muck and bullets of a battlefield.
Since England’s epic victory over the All Blacks at the weekend there has been an inevitable surge in interest in rugby and the forthcoming outcome of the World Cup.
Even newspapers like The Sun – and please don’t ask me how I have come to acquire this knowledge – which in the ordinary course of events rarely mentions rugby, have jumped on the bandwagon overnight and begun devoting two to three pages per edition to jingoistic coverage of “Eddie Jones and his England heroes building towards World Cup glory”.
Closer to Chez Moi, the mood is not dissimilar.
Three weeks ago an eighty-one year old neighbour – hitherto one of the last you’d expect to be a rugby fan – took to popping down the lane to join us for England’s World Cup matches, partly because he’d received a pass from his spouse to do so and partly because – having the misfortune to have been educated at Stowe and therefore never been exposed to rugby – he correctly assumed we’d be able to explain some of the complexities of the rules and tactics.
It’s been fascinating to watch his development.
He began broadly conversant with rugby’s hegemony and the special pre-eminence of All Blacks – without quite understanding why the hakas is allowed before games – but he’ll never acquire an understanding of what goes on in the scrum, rucks or at the breakdown.
He much prefers rugby’s TMO referral approach to that of football’s VAR because the referee remains in charge and you can hear the interaction with the video official. And – having enough nous to appreciate the principles of any sport – he shouts with exasperation (I shall spare readers the expletives) every time a team kicks the ball apparently aimlessly downfield and thereby hands possession to the opposition.
He’s not the only person who’s suddenly a rugby fan.
Everywhere I go – in shops, public spaces or in company – both genders are clearly aware of the importance of this Saturday. (No doubt the increasingly saturation-level media coverage is adding logs to the proverbial fire).
All over the country the distaff species is apparently content to prepare cooked breakfasts and cede control of the television zapper to their male counterparts, probably in part because it will give them a couple of hours respite from other interactions.
Last night I was emerging from my local Waitrose laden with provisions when I bumped into the ebullient “Kiwi Dave” on the pavement – someone whom I hadn’t seen for six months because our local health club burned down.
His most exciting news of all was that it had reopened a fortnight ago – I had no knowledge of this – and he had already been going there regularly: we now plan to meet there late afternoon today.
Typical of his nation, he brought up England’s semi-final victory before I did and was fulsome in his praise of our performance. When I began trying to commiserate with him, he was having none of it.
“The Blacks were poor. Never got started. We were lucky not to lose by 20 points. Of course we expected to win, but hey, it’s only a game of footy. We got beat, and deservedly – end of …” was his gist.
There are still four and a half days to go – I don’t count the meaningless “third/fourth play-off – and it’s going to get more special by the hour.
