England must beware their own arrogance

It has taken just one week of a holiday trip to the United Kingdom to remind me why so many people around the world were hoping England would not win rugby's premier prize.

One month after Jonny Wilkinson slotted the drop-goal that clinched them the World Cup, there are even several English people of my acquaintance who want to say the words "Enough already". Hardly a day goes by without there being some television programme devoted to England's success or some charity dinner or parade boldly promoted in the newspapers.

This being England, where rugby is not the No1 sport, this is of course no bad thing. As we saw when England did their parade of honour through London two weeks ago, the triumph has done wonders for the game in this country. Turn-over for this season has been boosted to a mooted figure of a massive £71-million, much of it thanks to the World Cup, which has attracted a mass of new rugby converts to the clubs around London.

It becomes immediately noticeable when you travel through Heathrow and onto the Picadilly line that takes you into London just how much more high profile rugby union has become.

Last week you could not pick up a newspaper without reading somewhere a profile on Wilkinson, who is now rivalling Beckham for instant recognisability. And in the one newspaper that I read where Wilkinson was not interviewed, it was kicking coach Dave Aldred who came under the spotlight.

What did the interviewer concentrate almost exclusively on in his double page spread? You've guessed it, we now know more about the secrets of Wilkinson's kicking style than the man himself. You would think that rugby was just a game decided by place kicks if you see the amount of space devoted to the art in the English newspapers.

All of this is of course good, and it is for the greater good of the game. In a country where rugby is just one of several sports vying for attention, no amount of space devoted to rugby union is a bad thing.

That rugby has a new status was evidenced by the prime position all newspapers, both broadsheet and tabloid, devoted to David Campese's humiliating little walk through London last week.

For those of you who don't know, Campese, the former world champion Australian winger, was recognised as one of England's severest critics before the World Cup started. Writing a column in The Times, Campese said that England did not have a snowball's chance of lifting the trophy.

Those words have now come back to haunt him, but being the good sport that most Aussies are, he agreed to take a walk through London confessing that he had got it all wrong and that the best team had indeed won the World Cup.

This he did, with a well-known internet betting agency sponsoring the walk through the high streets of one of the biggest cities in the world, and no doubt benefitting hugely from the massive amount of mileage that the stunt received.

But mention of Campese's name also brings up the subject that would irk many of those who decided, in view of the fact that they were undeniably the best rugby team on the planet, sided with England when they played their deciding match against the Aussies.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it does appear that the success has gone to their heads. That is the only way to interpret England coach Clive Woodward's spiteful little attack on Campese when the great wing was asked to hand over the BBC's Team of the Year award to the English rugby players.

The Woodward venom was directed at the BBC, but Campese came in for some whithering criticism in the process: Among other things, it was said that he "enjoys little or no respect in the world of rugby". Woodward argued that instead of Campese, it should have been "Princess Anne, Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Steve Redgrave or George Cohen".

The immediate question that springs to mind is where Woodward gets off pontificating to the BBC about who should be handing out their trophies. Is this the level of arrogance we can look forward to now that England are the world champions?

It was not the only time this past week where Woodward might have been accused of being graceless. Before the weekend match against the New Zealand Barbarians at Twickenham, Woodward took an unnecessary swipe at the team that his men beat in the final.

Asked about the under-strength team that he had selected for the Twickenham celebration match, Woodward commented that the combination, which was without 12 regulars, would still be good enough to hammer Australia. He later opined that his men should have beaten Australia by 20 or 30 points in the final, and he says now that he is sorry they didn't.

Apart from reminding him that his full-strength team only won with a drop-goal 20 seconds from time, you have to ask what is the point of all of this? Even if Woodward did cop a bit of flak from the Aussie press building up to the final, that does not justify the mean comments which even for some English people are starting to sour the memory of one of the great sporting moments.

Perhaps former England and British Lions lock Paul Ackford, writing a column in The Sunday Telegraph, best summed up my feelings on the matter when he reminded Woodward of something that Campese, for all his faults, clearly well understands - namely that "great sportspeople accept triumph and humiliation with equal grace".

New Zealand and South Africa, two rugby countries that have tripped over their own arrogance in the past two decades, might advise Woodward to choose his words a little more carefully lest he gets reminded of them when his team is on the way down.