OPINION
Why do the English love it so much when their rugby team beats New Zealand? Sheer novelty plays a part.
All Blacks-England games are rare – only 44 in 119 years – England wins are rarer still. We’ve had just eight, only two in New Zealand.
So though this year’s first Test in Dunedin ended up closer than most English fans expected, we don’t expect a win in Auckland to follow.
But of course, if our team does somehow win at Eden Park, we’ll all be absolutely insufferable. Why? Well, we’re English. But also, I think, because we suffer from a cultural cringe.
The cultural cringe is an Australian concept, concerning the relationship between colony and mother country, coined by the critic Arthur Phillips in 1950, expounded on (and ultimately laid to rest) by the great Clive James.
In literary terms, Phillips defined it thus: “The Cringe mainly appears in an inability to escape needless comparisons. The Australian reader, more or less consciously, hedges and hesitates, asking himself, ‘Yes, but what would a cultivated Englishman think of this’” novel, or poem, or play?
In rugby terms – if not speaking for the England team themselves – I define it thus: “The English rugby fan, more or less consciously, hedges and hesitates, asking himself, ‘Yes, but what would a cultivated New Zealander think of this ruck, or tackle, or try?’
I realise this runs counter to the cliché of the arrogant Pom. But my case is simple: we invented rugby but you’re much better at it, and we know it, so no matter how good our team is, even if we win in your backyard, we will always seek affirmation from you.
And we won’t get it. And nor will anyone else.
New Zealanders are better at rugby than anyone – except maybe South Africans, although the historical record there tilts All Black, too (regardless of recent World Cups).
What’s more, New Zealanders know they are better at rugby than anyone else. And whenever the All Blacks prove this, time after time after time, New Zealanders do not rush to say to the losers, “Well played.” They rush to say, “Screw you.”
Rather than cringe, we Englishmen bristle at that. Of course we do. Nobody loves a bad loser, but a bad winner is a whole other thing.
And yet, fundamentally, on a molecular level, none of that matters. When England are playing the All Blacks … some part of each English rugby fan cringes.
We cringe because we know your forwards are harder and meaner. We cringe because we know your backs are slicker and quicker. We know this as we know night follows day, up follows down and a let-off follows an All Black lock unzipping an Englishman’s head at a ruck.
So when very occasionally our team does win – when the cosmic order is briefly knocked out of line – we become as insufferable as you are when you win, which is the rest of the time. And when we somehow win in New Zealand, we’re more insufferable still.
The last time it happened was in Wellington in June 2003, in a game I will cherish for life.
I cherish that game, which England won 15-13, for being perhaps the greatest performance by a uniquely great team that went on to win the World Cup.
I cherish it for the names to be found among those beaten All Blacks: McCaw, Spencer, Howlett. Williams, Rokocoko, Oliver. Dan Carter and Jerry Collins were on the bench, for God’s sake.
I cherish it for that legendary England pack of Johnson, Dallaglio and Hill, and for the great goal-line stand through which six of those forwards – “white orcs on steroids”, eh? – held off a full and fuming All Blacks pack. After which, asked what he said to inspire his men, Martin Johnson just said, “Push.”
I cherish it because when asked a follow-up question, “What was going through your mind in those crucial scrums?”, Johno just said, “My spine.”
Did he really say that? Maybe. I’m not going to check it. The game belongs in myth. And yes, Johno owed a lot to his time as a kid in King Country, as an NZ U21. But that’s my point: even our greatest captain was formed with New Zealand’s help, and we know it.
I’m pretty sure the editor who commissioned this piece found me insufferable after that Wellington game in 2003. Cringeworthy, probably. We were both working on the Independent sports desk, in the London Docklands. I’m sure I crowed for a week.
Sorry, not sorry. I crowed because England just aren’t supposed to beat New Zealand and particularly not in New Zealand, and we English rugby lovers know it, because we have our cultural cringe.
Thanks to the likes of Arthur Phillips and Clive James, Australia outgrew its cultural cringe long ago. Perhaps we English rugby lovers will grow out of ours too.
But in a way, I hope we don’t.
When England beat the All Blacks, it is to an English rugby fan one of the sweetest, rarest, most fleeting feelings there is. It’s so sweet because we know that after it ebbs away, normal service will resume.
