Review of the year

Here's Johnny

Julian Barnes on a day of emotion and jubilation for England

The Observer, Sunday November 30 2003

It's the young supporters - from high-fiving Hooray Harries in the stands to ecstatic pub screen debutants back home - that I feel sorry for. Envious as well, of course: they must think all this is somehow normal, an inevitable culmination, even a proof of national virtue. Further, that it must and will continue. They have yet to learn that supporting any team - any English team at least - always involves much more pain than pleasure in the long run. In the old days, for every sublimely gliding Richard Sharp try at Twickenham, there were grim afternoons of being kicked to death up the touchline by Clive Rowlands in the Cardiff mud. More recently, each Grand Slam has had to be paid for by the recurrent sight of the team blowing it on the final Saturday of the season as Celtic or Gallic passion once more freeze the English brain and limbs.

But now this. World champions, with victories on the way over all our major opponents except New Zealand. Intense exultation is mixed with intense relief: that we didn't blow it, that we played to our strengths, that no one got seriously hurt. Yet seasoned England supporters will have recognised the all too familiar, all too English way in which they were put through the wringer for 100 minutes. Only an Englishman - at least, this is what it always feels like at the time - could have produced Ben Kay's cardiac-arrest fumble two centimetres from the line (but then perhaps only an Englishman would have nicely made a joke of similarly fumbling his winner's medal when he received it). Only an English team, having defined itself as one that grows ineluctably stronger in the second half, could have managed to reverse that habit before our eyes and fail to score a single point in the second 40 minutes. The lineout was, as usual, one long masochistic psychodrama. And then, what could be more English - more heart-warmingly, tear-duct-proddingly Dickensian - than the ending, in which the golden boy joyfully pulled the chestnuts from the fire? Dramatically, it could only have been improved upon if Ben Kay had dropped that goal - though this might have been straying into the realm of magic realism.

Before and constantly since we have been told that this was 1966 all over again. True, we won in extra time, and true, Lawrence Dallaglio cheerfully applied the trophy's lid to his head just as Nobby Stiles had once done. But rugby still isn't soccer: Mr White Van was not flying the flag of St George this time. The juster comparison was with 1971, when the Lions gained their first series victory in New Zealand in an equally close-fought fashion. Cliff Morgan's report on that 1971 tour, from an old copy of the Listener, points up some key similarities. Those Lions had for the first time been properly prepared for such a tour, both mentally and physically - prepared, moreover, to anticipate and believe in victory. Morgan also noted that for all the lustre of their famous backs, the Lions would have come back empty-handed had it not been for the strength and dominance of their pack.

Johnson's men were always likely to give us a pack-led, yeoman victory; they had promised us as much, and on this they surely delivered. Might being world champions encourage them to broaden their game, to be as expansive as they have sometimes been in the recent past? It would be nice to think so, and to see Wilkinson rip past an opponent using the Jason Robinson shuffle he once learnt. On the other hand, a rather grim thought strikes me in the shadow of this considerable and entirely deserved victory. How do we appear to other sides, and to other sides' supporters? Utterly professional, highly organised, intensely focused, bloody-minded, incapable of admitting defeat until the whistle blows, admirable and yet somehow unloveable. The victory in Sydney was in the end (not to mention the beginning and middle) triumph of the will stuff. Who might that remind us of? Well, I'm afraid it's the German football team. Perhaps not the comparison we most aspire to; but then - to be even-handed for a moment - your Teuton footballer is often a lot more skilful than we can generally bear to admit. And can we really imagine that to the neutral eye the finest English rugby, however effective, is more pleasing than the finest French or New Zealand rugby? So we might have to get used to the idea of being thought a little bit German.

Not that I expect this victory to lead to a lengthy spell of English dominance. The Welsh are bound to be fancying the next encounter, the French praying hard to the gods of dry weather, and the New Zealanders out scouting for a few extra teaky forwards. Our younger supporters, ridiculously indulged by this victory, may dwell for a while in a land of make-believe and pretend-superiority until the next reality check in Paris, Dublin, or Cardiff; if they are very lucky they might dream their way through much of the next four years. Older fans will enjoy the dizzying moment at this pinnacle of pleasure differently; not least because the prospect below them hasn't changed. We know that before long it will be time to descend again to that familiar plateau of pain.

· Julian Barnes's novel England, England (Cape) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2003/nov/30/rugbyworldcup2003.rugbyunion2

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