English = Suck at sports

World champions of self-deceit

Stephen Bierley
Tuesday November 19, 2002
The Guardian

Right. Here it is then. England will not win rugby's World Cup in Australia next year, and they will not win the cricket World Cup in South Africa either. Or soccer's European Championship in 2004 or the next World Cup in 2006. Neither will Tim Henman ever win Wimbledon, nor any other grand slam title. Or Dwain Chambers the Olympic 100m. And I could go on.

The point is that in this country - England, that is - we cling grotesquely to the certain belief that we are a major power in world sport and we just won't learn we are not. Our cricketers win their first Test against India in the summer and suddenly we are odds-on to regain the Ashes. Our footballers defeat Argentina and thereafter we become racing certainties to stuff Brazil and win the World Cup. It is all bonkers and, worse, we can no longer see the funny side or recognise how much we are being laughed at.

Back in 1978 we roared with mirth when Ally MacLeod, the national McMessiah, vowed Scotland would win the World Cup in Argentina. How was it possible, we wondered, that anybody could believe in, let alone swallow, this absurd brand of xenophobic optimism? For here was an anti-English, anti-world crusade that left opponents incredulous, and filled those more discerning Scots with a painful disquiet.

Hubris was inevitable and swift. A 3-1 defeat in Cordoba by Peru, followed four days later by a 1-1 draw in the same stadium against Iran, and it was all over. Many of the bars in the Argentinian city had been stocked high with single malts - 25 quid a large (very large) shot, I remember to my cost - and there were not many full bottles left by the time the Tartan army moved on.

Scotland had arrived in South America comparing themselves with the best and discovered, quite dreadfully, as had always seemed possible to any rational critic, that they could not compete with the weakest.

The scars are still apparent. Indeed, there are many north of the border who firmly believe the continued support of the Tartan Army in foreign fields is now an act of perverse folly, which gives some sort of false assurance and credence to a bunch of international players who are hardly worth the name. But what will it take for the English to come to their sporting senses?

You might have thought the almighty thrashing handed out by the Australians at the Gabba, and the demolition of Henman by Lleyton Hewitt at Wimbledon this summer, may have quietened the tub thumping and flag waving just a little, that a few notes of caution would have been interspersed with any triumphal trumpeting. Yet, on consecutive Saturdays, Twickenham has echoed to the boastful, self-congratulatory braying of those who appear to believe that the Rugby World Cup is already as good as won.

Television is much to blame. These days every studio is crammed full of ex-players who make not the slightest pretence to be objective, notably when national teams are involved.

The BBC used to be an exception, but now it stands for nothing more than the British Broadcasting of Celebrities. Radio 5 Live, the station that promised roll-over news and sport, is too often nothing much more than a talking shop for so-called 'names' while the ubiquitous phone-in, the cheapest, most banal form of broadcasting, frequently takes precedence over live sport. Small wonder, perhaps, that the station of the nation has helped spawn a particular sporting public in England that appears incapable of judging its national teams and players in anything but the most simplistic terms and appears incapable of distinguishing between fact and fiction, hype and reality.

This is not to say that England cannot win the Rugby World Cup next year or that our cricketers will not rise phoenix-like from the Ashes to triumph in the World Cup one-day thrashes in South Africa. But is it not possible to recognise or accept that they may not and, in all probability, will not?

This is not to be unpartisan or inherently pessimistic, but simply to recognise that in international terms the English are a small nation with an inflated opinion of themselves. There will be triumphs, and there will be victories against the odds, but generally, as Scottish footballers and Welsh rugby players have discovered, the English will not finish top of the sporting tree very often.