Why Have People Stopped Hating The English?

What is going on? Why aren’t the Braveheart hordes heading to Murrayfield intent on ambushing the English and sending them homeward tae think again? If they are, then they’re keeping their plans very quiet. Ever since Scotland captain, David Sole, led his side on a slow march down the tunnel and out on to Murrayfield to claim the Grand Slam against England in 1990, much has been made of the galvanising effect of hating the English. It proved productive that afternoon as England, overwhelming favourites, were downed. A myth was born, although it has to be said that the one bloke who didn’t buy into all that anti-English guff was Sole himself, the slow walk notwithstanding.

There’s a terrific book out at the moment, entitled ‘ The Grudge, ‘ written by a top-end journo, Irishman Tom English, who works out of Scotland. Sole, with his own English connections, didn’t feel there was any grudge about it. Scotland simply wanted to put one over on fancied opponents. And, boy, did they. Battlers 13 Bottlers 7, read one headline from that day.

Forwards coach, Jim Telfer, a man more feared by his own side than by the opposition, was another not to bag the English for the sake of it, reckoning that England would beat Scotland nine times out of ten. He was proven right, Scotland not winning again until 2000. The book is terrific for the insight it gives to Telfer’s brutal training methods. Fear and loathing about sums up the attitude of some of his own forwards towards him. One or two of them, such as no.8, Derek White, were on the verge of walking out. Either that or thumping ‘ Creamy’ as he was known.

Part of the enduring appeal of the Six Nations is that it plays on tribal loyalties. The rugby may be variable but the emotions are for real. Most of the ill-feeling is directed England’s way. For a while through the nineties, and post that famous day, it got nasty. Rather than being knockabout fun, it turned into something more malicious, more concentrated, more unappealing. Of course everyone wants to beat England, a legacy of the days of Empire and all that. You might take exception to the fact that the governing body refers to itself as the Rugby Football Union and not the English RFU, and you would be right. I’ve never felt that the players themselves were full of their own self-importance ( ok, one or two ) but the image was there: stuck-up, arrogant, condescending and there to be beaten.

England always had a rough ride in Cardiff. No love lost there. The French always bristled about ‘les Rosbifs’. Ireland, ironically, who might have had more due cause than most behaved as the Irish do, beguiled them with charm off the field and then set out to beat the living bejaysus out of them on it.

I sense, though, that anti-English feeling doesn’t run as deep or cut as sharply as once it used to do. Is this because they’ve been so ho-hum this last seven years ? Probably. And if there’s one reason to hope that they fortunes get an up-turn it’s because of that – we want our pantomime villains back.

If you want to read more of Mick Cleary go to www.telegraph.co.uk