We over here in the UK have been making a big fuss of England's rugby team winning the World Cup for the first time last month, and Monday saw an amazing parade in London to celebrate, with almost a million people turning out on the streets to cheer the team. It also served to emphasise (I believe), what a powerful and positive social force a great sports event can be. Now read what one of Britain's top newspaper writers thought about it all. His name is Simon Barnes, and he writes for The Times (and I've sat next to him at sporting events several times 
):
(For those unfamiliar with rugby, imagine football without the pads and helmets, add in a dash of the more non-stop style of hockey and flavour with a Yankees v Red Sox rivalry, times 10! Oh, and the Johnny referred to is Johnny Wilkinson - a mixture of Joe Montana, Lawrence Taylor, Joe DiMaggio, Nolan Ryan and Wayne Gretzky - all at the age of 24)
Ah, now I understand that's what it was all about
By Simon Barnes
IT IS hard to appreciate what winning a World Cup means when you are 12,000 miles away from where the action is. I was, alas, in Sydney, where the World Cup final was merely played. I could not be in England, where the World Cup was actually won. And so it was impossible to understand what the whole thing really meant.
Until yesterday. Until the extraordinary events of yesterday told me how much it really mattered. That it mattered to an extent I was totally unaware of. That winning the rugby union World Cup had gone far beyond rugby union, had gone far beyond sport. It was matter of nationwide concern, and now a matter of nationwide rejoicing.
I knew people cared, but I had no idea how much. I knew that it mattered, in the strange and splendid way that the trivialities of sport do seem to matter, but I had no idea how deeply it mattered.
But it mattered so much that 750,000 people made a pilgrimage on a bitterly cold day to stand in the street for hours to get a brief glimpse of a passing bus and 30 burly fellows in grey suits and mercifully hidden brown moccasins waving a golden cup. This was the World Cup parade; this was a day of national rejoicing.
You make mental lists: the best films, the best records, the best bits of sport. I am not quite sure where I would put the events that took place on that Sydney night a fortnight or so back somewhere in the top ten, but there may be one or two more that have a more personal resonance.
But I have never been part of an event that mattered so greatly to so many English people. I have never been part of an event that required so much and such heartfelt rejoicing. And in Australia I was only half aware of this. I had no idea how many people had got sucked up in the rambling narrative, the final explosive drama and the cosmically gratifying conclusion of the rugby union World Cup of 2003.
I love it when an event gets big on you, when a story gathers pace and acquires a life of its own. As a writer, you cease to set the agenda; you are merely taking dictation from the forces around you. It happened at the 2002 soccer World Cup, until that adventure ended in disappointment. It happened in Sydney three years ago, when the 16-year-long rowing epic of Steve Redgrave entered its final chapter. And it happened in Sydney again last month.
But it seems to me that the national response was far greater for this triumph. Greater because it was a victory. Greater because it was a ball game, with all the complexity and drama that entails. Greater because the team was called England; as if the games had been played not by 15 of those burly blokes but by every one of us, all of us out there making tackles and grabbing passes and wondering like hell how to get the ball to Jonny.
Ah, Jonny Wilkinson: a single, transcendent individual in a sport and a squad that prizes above all things the virtue of self-effacement. A man who hates stardom and loathes the limelight. But when it came to the most dramatic moment in English sporting history since 1966, he wanted the ball and with it the weight of the world or at least the World Cup on his shoulders.
He stood up only reluctantly on the bus, but he stood up like a giant when England made their final play with 28 seconds to go in that final. He wants no one ever to look at him; it is only when the entire nation turns towards him in hungry expectation that he leaps for the glare of the spotlight like Posh Spice.
Wilkinson and the England rugby team have captured the imagination of the nation and so the nation celebrated in an unprecedented fashion yesterday. And no doubt the players on the leading bus felt as I did on bus No 3: my God, is that what its all about? Have you ever read a book and only realised in the final chapter that you have been privileged to read a masterpiece? Yesterday was like that on bus three. But for the players on that lead bus, yesterday they realised for the first time that they had written one.
):(For those unfamiliar with rugby, imagine football without the pads and helmets, add in a dash of the more non-stop style of hockey and flavour with a Yankees v Red Sox rivalry, times 10! Oh, and the Johnny referred to is Johnny Wilkinson - a mixture of Joe Montana, Lawrence Taylor, Joe DiMaggio, Nolan Ryan and Wayne Gretzky - all at the age of 24)
Ah, now I understand that's what it was all about
By Simon Barnes
IT IS hard to appreciate what winning a World Cup means when you are 12,000 miles away from where the action is. I was, alas, in Sydney, where the World Cup final was merely played. I could not be in England, where the World Cup was actually won. And so it was impossible to understand what the whole thing really meant.
Until yesterday. Until the extraordinary events of yesterday told me how much it really mattered. That it mattered to an extent I was totally unaware of. That winning the rugby union World Cup had gone far beyond rugby union, had gone far beyond sport. It was matter of nationwide concern, and now a matter of nationwide rejoicing.
I knew people cared, but I had no idea how much. I knew that it mattered, in the strange and splendid way that the trivialities of sport do seem to matter, but I had no idea how deeply it mattered.
But it mattered so much that 750,000 people made a pilgrimage on a bitterly cold day to stand in the street for hours to get a brief glimpse of a passing bus and 30 burly fellows in grey suits and mercifully hidden brown moccasins waving a golden cup. This was the World Cup parade; this was a day of national rejoicing.
You make mental lists: the best films, the best records, the best bits of sport. I am not quite sure where I would put the events that took place on that Sydney night a fortnight or so back somewhere in the top ten, but there may be one or two more that have a more personal resonance.
But I have never been part of an event that mattered so greatly to so many English people. I have never been part of an event that required so much and such heartfelt rejoicing. And in Australia I was only half aware of this. I had no idea how many people had got sucked up in the rambling narrative, the final explosive drama and the cosmically gratifying conclusion of the rugby union World Cup of 2003.
I love it when an event gets big on you, when a story gathers pace and acquires a life of its own. As a writer, you cease to set the agenda; you are merely taking dictation from the forces around you. It happened at the 2002 soccer World Cup, until that adventure ended in disappointment. It happened in Sydney three years ago, when the 16-year-long rowing epic of Steve Redgrave entered its final chapter. And it happened in Sydney again last month.
But it seems to me that the national response was far greater for this triumph. Greater because it was a victory. Greater because it was a ball game, with all the complexity and drama that entails. Greater because the team was called England; as if the games had been played not by 15 of those burly blokes but by every one of us, all of us out there making tackles and grabbing passes and wondering like hell how to get the ball to Jonny.
Ah, Jonny Wilkinson: a single, transcendent individual in a sport and a squad that prizes above all things the virtue of self-effacement. A man who hates stardom and loathes the limelight. But when it came to the most dramatic moment in English sporting history since 1966, he wanted the ball and with it the weight of the world or at least the World Cup on his shoulders.
He stood up only reluctantly on the bus, but he stood up like a giant when England made their final play with 28 seconds to go in that final. He wants no one ever to look at him; it is only when the entire nation turns towards him in hungry expectation that he leaps for the glare of the spotlight like Posh Spice.
Wilkinson and the England rugby team have captured the imagination of the nation and so the nation celebrated in an unprecedented fashion yesterday. And no doubt the players on the leading bus felt as I did on bus No 3: my God, is that what its all about? Have you ever read a book and only realised in the final chapter that you have been privileged to read a masterpiece? Yesterday was like that on bus three. But for the players on that lead bus, yesterday they realised for the first time that they had written one.
