COMMENT
My first job as a young reporter in England was covering a national-grade rugby team. It wasn't a meteoric rise to fame, just that I was considered too junior to cover the area's three minor league soccer teams.
Back then, rugby didn't register on the Richter scale of sporting interest in
most parts of our great nation.
Darts and snooker had more of a following, and things haven't changed much since.
Which is why winning the World Cup will be especially sweet. Clive Woodward has picked his team from a talent pool who can count their genes in double figures, and know one another from the upper fifth. They probably bunked together in the same dorm.
So consider how good we'd be if our best athletes played the game. Imagine Michael Owen selling Carlos a dummy, swerving past four, no five, defenders and scoring in the corner. Becks wouldn't miss the conversion, either.
And this talk of million-pound-plus players is plain rubbish, too.
All Jonny (without an h) and his team-mates expect for winning is a weekend at Windsor and first crack at the pheasants (with an h).
Back to reality. England are a well-drilled, talented and highly paid bunch of professionals, quite possibly the country's best sports team since Sir Alf Ramsey's side won the real World Cup in 1966.
But why do people down here hate them so much? My colleague Andrew Austin, a dear, sweet man from South Africa, has even written: "One thing is clear ... England must not be allowed to win the World Cup."
Why? Would it trigger Armageddon or something?
I suspect this attitude has something to do with envy.
England has the culture, a proper currency, access to the EC, the best TV programmes, not to mention its beer.
Taking the Webb Ellis Cup back to Blighty will give it the only thing it hasn't got - rugby supremacy - thus showing its former dominions that there's a way to go before they can be considered proper countries.
As a new New Zealander (of 21 years' vintage), people keep fixing me with a steely gaze and asking who I'll support in the event of an England-New Zealand final.
The answer's easy. I just hope it will be a good game and that rugby will be the winner.
And if you believe that, don't forget to leave out a nip of whisky and a mince pie for Santa.
<i>Peter Eley:</i> Clive and his boys can count on the old school spirit
COMMENT
My first job as a young reporter in England was covering a national-grade rugby team. It wasn't a meteoric rise to fame, just that I was considered too junior to cover the area's three minor league soccer teams.
Back then, rugby didn't register on the Richter scale of sporting interest in
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