England-Ireland was a good match. But it didn't look good for the nations of the North

It was odd to find myself overtaking the Irish Rugby Football Union team bus on the M40 this morning. I was heading towards Oxford and my mother’s; it presumably for points West, into Wales and a boat for Ireland. In the meantime, I was just another Englishman pulling ahead of the Irish Rugby Team, just as happened on the turf of Twickenham yesterday.

Another Englishman posied to leave Irish Rugby behind

We fans of England tend to be rather a lonely band: no non-Englishman is every likely to join us, since England is the team everyone loves to hate. “Anyone but England” is a pretty standard position to take.

That tends to put chips on our shoulders, and with the way the England team has been playing of late – and “of late” in this context means the last twelve years or so since it won the World Cup in 2003 – those chips get knocked off our shoulders with monotonous regularity. Rugby fans, however, unlike their counterparts in that villainous game with the round ball, are supposed to resist provocation, so we try to smile through the gloating and show that we’re bigger than that.

A win over Ireland, winners of the last two Six Nations Championship titles, is therefore satisfying. Still more satisfying, though, would be to see England playing well. Sadly, we’re not there yet: England’s victory against an injury-bedevilled Irish side was hardly the sparkling triumph we might have liked.

It’s a sad truth on the rugby world stage that the teams from the Northern hemisphere tend to be weaker than those from the South. That’s been historically the case, but in my experience it’s never been truer than now. Last year’s World Cup took place in England, giving the North home advantage, but not only did the hosts, England themselves, fail to make it to the quarter-finals, not a single Northern team was among the four in the semi-finals.

Admittedly, one was denied in the most galling circumstances: Australia overcame Scotland in the dying moments of their quarter-final, but only due to a penalty awarded in a terrible refereeing error. However, had Scotland progressed, it would have been a fluke, as the Scots have proved themselves yet again this season to be one of the weakest teams even in the weak Northern Hemisphere.

Funnily enough, that weakness however makes the great competition of the North, the Six Nations championship, more interesting. At least the teams are all much of a muchness. There don’t tend to be easy, run-away wins. Several times this season matches have been won by teams which were behind at one point – notably in yesterday’s England-Ireland game, where Ireland was 10-6 up before ultimately losing 21-10.

So the weakness of all the teams involved has made for more gripping games and better entertainment. But they remain weak. Often, in the most trivial way. Again and again, promising England moves were frittered away in penalties conceded for avoidable and silly infringements. These are professional players and they should know better than to make life so much easier for their opponents.

Why, two England players committed infringements so serious that they had to spend ten minutes off the field, in the sin bin. Terrible self-inflicted injuries...

So the match was fun to watch. And I enjoyed overtaking the Irish team bus. But overtaking a Southern team would be far more satisfying, if unlikely to happen any time soon.

Rugby: a delight even when it's a grind

Strangely, I’ve never played rugby. Or perhaps that’s not so strange: I was always small and though, like most small kids, self-preservation taught me to be reasonably quick, I was never what could be called athletic.

So if I love rugby, it’s purely as a spectator. But love it I do, and find it enormously entertaining, at least at international level. And above all at the level of the six nations, the main annual competition in the northern hemisphere.

It’s a curious mix: two Latin nations, France and Italy, and the four ‘home’ nations, Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland. The latter grouping is interesting, since Ireland went to considerable lengths to leave that particular home. Even so, when the emerald nation plays rugby it draws its player from both the Republic and Northern Ireland, currently still inside the United Kingdom.

What’s more, to show their attachment to that home, the Scots’ rugby anthem is ‘Flower of Scotland’ whose refrain refers to how the country ‘stood against him, proud Edward's army, and sent him homeward to think again.’ And who was this Edward? Why, England’s king, second of the name.

See? Just listing the countries taking part raises all sorts of fine points of controversy.

Though it’s a rough, tough game, occasionally brutal, rugby somehow generates a surprisingly convivial atmosphere. Fans aren’t segregated at matches. Women and children attend. Whole families turn up.

And, though it’s a rough, tough game, it’s also surprisingly stimulating intellectually. Players are forbidden in front of the ball, so the game embodies a concept of territory: each team holds the territory behind it. The slow build-up of territorial control is sometimes reminiscent of chess, though generally things move a little more quickly and with rather more physical contact.

That contact, though rough and tough (of course) is also a lot less brutal than one might think. For instance, it is less dangerous than American football where the use of helmets and padding tempts players into far greater violence, leading to more serious long-term injuries. Besides, in my own lifetime I’ve watched the laws of rugby evolve significantly and always in the direction of making it safer.

What emerges from all this is an engrossing game, swinging through many phases in which a team builds its control of territory, alternating with sudden explosive passages of running and passing when one or other side sees its opportunity for a breakthrough. It can be quite breathtaking.

But not always.

Last weekend, I watched two matches, France against Wales from Paris and Ireland against England from Dublin.

The TV companies produce highlights of a game for transmission when it’s finished; I have to say it must have been hard work to find more than a couple of minutes of highlights from either of these games, even using a generous definition of what constitutes a ‘highlight’.

The Paris game included just one try, the most exciting score in a rugby match. The Dublin games included none. Both games involved a lot of slow, grinding work to occupy territory and smother the other side’s attacks. You need to be a real aficionado of the game to enjoy it when it’s like that.

The only try in the two games I watched:
George North goes over the line for Wales against France.

Clearly, I’m a real fan, because I enjoyed both of them. You certainly won’t hear me saying that those games weren’t enthralling.

On the other hand, I do have to make a possibly damning admission: I’m not sure I would have enjoyed them as much had the results been different.

My (French) wife points out that I hold French nationality (thanks to her) as well as British. But naturalisation changes nothing when it comes to rugby loyalty and mine is to England. I’ve backed the English side for a long time, through thick and thin, and that’s meant a great deal of thin as well as occasional flashes of thick.

England won in Ireland.

And who are the great rivals of England? Why, France of course. 

And France lost to Wales.

I love the game for its own sake. Naturally. But an unlikely win for my side in Dublin? And an equally unlikely home defeat for its main rival?

It’s just possible that my pleasure at the grinding matches this weekend wasn’t entirely down to selfless love of the game. A little element of partisan advantage may have contributed just a little...

Allez les blancs

My wife Danielle, who is French – a point which is not entirely irrelevant to my theme today – reminds me that there’s a subject I have failed to address, much to the detriment of a blog that sets out to cover every theme that matters to mankind.

Danielle has been told by our good friend Yannick, equally French, that he was delighted by my failure to gloat over yesterday’s narrow but nonetheless famous  victory of the English rugby team over the French, in the Six Nations championship.

Now I know how to take a hint. At heart, Yannick is not in fact grateful for my silence. There is an etiquette in these matters. When your team beats your friend’s, there is an obligation to rub his nose in it a bit. If you don’t, you deprive him of the opportunity to do the same back to you when the tables are turned at some distant period in the future.

But I’m sorry, Yannick, I will not descend so low. There will be no hint of gloating from me. However fine the victory. And even though it took place in Paris. And even though France were unbeaten at home in the previous eleven matches. And had beaten England in every encounter since 2008.


Instead, Yannick, let me urge you to be philosophical. And if that doesn't work, at least indulge in a little Schadenfreude. You must be able to take satisfaction from the repeated shots we got of the face of Nicolas Sarkozy, in the crowd. He looked grim, didn’t he? You must admit that a lost international may be a price worth paying to see the usual fatuous smile wiped off those particular features.

In any case, it is not entirely in Yannick’s honour that I am writing this post. No, another and stranger incident strengthened my determination to respond to the reminder Danielle passed on from him.

Coming through St Pancras International station tonight, I happened to cross the path of Serge Betsen. He’s what’s known as a flanker in rugby and played a significant role in the French team until his retirement from the international game in 2008. Today, he plays at club level in England, for London Wasps. He was no doubt at St Pancras having caught the Eurostar back from Paris after yesterday’s superbly satisfying match.

Not that he shared my view of that outstanding game. I say that not as mere speculation, guessing that a former France player wouldn’t relish such a conclusive humiliation of his countrymen, but because I heard him express his dissatisfaction live and to camera, for the BBC. 


For reasons that escape me the BBC persist in using him as a commentator, despite the fact that his English can only be described, even in the most charitable terms, as inadequate to the task. Few sports commentators ever seem to rise far above the level of the banal; when they only have a vocabulary of 200 words, it becomes practically impossible.

Shame really. On the pitch he was fluent and graceful, though when he was wearing a French shirt, that was something I could frequently only admit through gritted teeth.

Serge Betsen at his best. How are the mighty fallen

I suppose the BBC stick with him because he plays in England. 


Incidentally, when the French talk about where a sportsman plays, they use the verb évoluer. In other words, they would say that Serge evolves in England.

Fortunately I have forbidden myself the slightest hint of gloating. Otherwise I might have said something ungenerous. I might have been tempted to write that on yesterday’s performance, it could do the entire French XV some good to evolve a little in England.


But that would have been unworthy of me.

Bannockburn, Murrayfield, Scottish glory and the stirring call for Devo Max

Relations between the English and the Scots are going to provide plentiful entertainment for at least the next two years. 

That's how long it's going to take to get to the proposed referendum on whether Scotland should stay in the United Kingdom or leave it. Or something in between. Because there is an intermediate choice,or ‘Devo Max’ as it is catchily called. 

It offers maximum devolution of control over its own affairs to Scotland, leaving only foreign affairs and the military in the hands of the United Kingdom. My view is that this is the option that Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, is really seeking. There just isn’t enough support for full independence in Scotland, and Salmond is much too canny not to know it. 

As a result, David Cameron, Prime Minister of the threatened United Kingdom, has completely ruled out including Devo Max in the referendum. This uncompromising stance by Cameron almost certainly means that the option will be on the ballot paper. Cameron has a glowing track record for taking strong positions in public and then backing down from them in private: he made a lot of noise telling our European partners they couldn’t use the Union’s institutions to tackle the Eurozone’s problems, but is now much more quietly letting them get on with it.

Similarly, because it is Salmond who wants to hold the referendum in 2014, Cameron has again issued a firm and resolute ‘no’ to that timing. That more or less guarantees that the referendum will take place to Salmond’s schedule. 

Salmond is keen on 2014 because it will be the 700th anniversary of the great Scots victory over the English at Bannockburn. Not, of course, that the referendum is in any way anglophobe.

Personally, I don’t begrudge him celebrating a Scots victory over the English. It's not as though there have been that many of them. In fact, on Saturday I watched them failing to achieve another. On the opening day of the Six Nations rugby championship, Scotland lined up to take on England, on their own iconic turf at Murrayfield, outside Edinburgh. England have a lamentable record of defeats at Murrayfield, particularly in the rain, so I was a little relieved to see that the weather was fine. 

What then followed, however, was an English performance of such stultifying mediocrity as to reduce even me, committed supporter that I am, to despair. I watched the other matches over the weekend and saw some fine games played by France, Ireland and Wales — the last two in the best match of them all, swinging from one side to the other right up to the last whistle. It was clear to me that had England faced any of those teams and played as they did against Scotland, they would have been, to use the technical term, stuffed.

So how come they didn’t lose to Scotland? Because Scotland showed an unerring capacity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They had much more of the ball, they made some excellent opportunities, they played with great skill — or at least they played with great skill until they got within a few seconds of actually scoring points, when they would inevitably collapse and let England off the hook. Again.

Great run. Going nowhere

What a contrast to the independence campaign! Salmond exudes complete confidence, sure of the rightness of his cause and of his own ability to deliver its goals. He sidesteps and weaves round the sluggish, uninspired and untalented Cameron, always a step ahead, turning to his own advantage every ploy the Englishman launches.

It’s as though Scotland had wisely reserved all its ineptitude for the rugby field. All the skill and competence that would have been necessary to beat the English on Saturday has been sucked out of the rugby team and recycled to the nation’s statesmen. It’s the only way I can explain the cack-handedness of the team and the sure-footedness of the politicians.

So I suspect the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn will be marked by another victory of agile, quick-witted Scots over sluggish and dull-witted English opposition.

Paris is worth a mass, claimed the future King Henry IV of France. And Devo Max must be worth a lost rugby match.

Even if ‘Devo Max’ itself sounds like nothing other than some kind of toilet cleaner.

Six Nations? How do we count six?

I can’t say it too often – the Six Nations rugby tournament is the most exciting sporting event of the year. But in 2010, there isn’t a six-nation contest – there are five nations bumping along the bottom, generating entertainment only because they’re so much of a muchness that the games tend to be tight and the suspense is maintained until the end. And then there’s one world-class side.

A measure of the mediocrity amongst the five also-rans is that Italy, the weakest side in the tournament since they joined, were made to look like real contenders by Ireland, England and Scotland. In fact, Scotland even managed to get themselves beaten (ironic as they then extracted a draw from England). Today, the only nation in the tournament that seems to be worth its place, France, made Italy look ordinary again, beating them 46-20.

Next week France just need to beat England in Paris to complete their full house of victories over all the other sides and take the grand slam. Might they be stopped? I can’t imagine it happening. If France have a weak point at all, it was revealed when they took their foot off the gas at the end, letting Italy score two tries in the last few minutes. Of course, France were already 33 points ahead by that time – if England have to let them get that kind of lead before they start scoring tries against them, then the French grand slam will be safe anyway.

And the secret of France’s success? As they say in rugby, they keep ball in hand. For reasons that escape me, the other sides have been kicking the ball to the opposition instead of keeping hold of it and running. Seems obvious enough doesn’t it? You can’t score if you haven’t got the ball. So my question to the management at Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Italy and most forcefully England, is – why do you keep giving it to the other side?

Practice doesn't make perfect losers

It’s always a high point of the year for me when the Six Nations Rugby tournament gets started.

It has so much going for it. First of all rugby leaves that boring game with the round ball way behind. In football, apart from the goalkeeper, everyone basically does the same thing – OK, some hang back a bit, others stay forward, while the rest mill about in midfield – but essentially they all go running up and down the field in a gaggle round the ball.

In rugby, there’s no confusing forwards and backs. As the camera pans along the teams during the anthems, you start with the giant forwards dominating the screen. Then there’s a drop of at least a head as you reach the scrum half. One of the things that made the New Zealand All Black Joshua Lomu so exceptional a player was that he was one of very few who could play as either a forward or a back.

Even within each division, the players all have roles that they have to master. A tight-head prop is not the same as a loose-head prop (aren't those great names?). Switch one to the other position and you get problems in the scrum, as Scotland discovered recently.

But that’s just the game itself. What makes the tournament particularly interesting is that it includes the four home nations – and it’s wonderful that for these purposes Ireland is one of the ‘home’ nations, and draws its players from North and South of the border – as well as France and Italy, and I can’t think of anything else that links specifically those six countries.

Italy still has a long way to go (even though they beat Scotland – again – last week) but France is a major force in international rugby. It’s hard for this England fan to admit it, but they’re probably the best side in the Tournament and are likely to take the Grand Slam this year. That’s tough to swallow, but I do like the fact that a Latin nation is able to play such a role in what remains a predominantly English-speaking competition.

And then there’s England.

Each season starts with a new flowering of hope.

Objective one is to win the Grand Slam, to beat all the other sides, which lasts until the first defeat.

Objective two is to win the tournament anyway, which lasts until someone else knocks it out of England’s grasp. 

Objective three, which I sometimes feel is the most important of all, is to beat France.

It happens much more often than one might think. Last season, the game was played in Twickenham, under historical conditions – I was in the crowd – and France was trounced. This year? It’s in Paris. France which tends to have just two speeds, full ahead and full astern, is in full ahead at the moment. As for England – well, they’re being sadly English.

What do I mean by English? They lost at home to Ireland last week. All hell broke out in the sports pages. Johnny Wilkinson, once the dream boy of England rugby has become the whipping boy, the scapegoat for all our shortcomings.

It’s terribly sad. It just confirms once again what I’ve long known: England are terribly losers.

Which is extraordinary considering how much practice they’ve had.