Rugby's Coming Home
Who'll win the 50th BBC Sports Personality of the Year this Sunday? David Beckham? Paula Radcliffe? Andrew Flintoff?
They can dream on. There's surely no competition, despite not just one but two rugby players being in the front running to lift the trophy.
In a way, neither Martin Johnson nor Jonny Wilkinson should be eligible for this showdown, given its title. Johnson, England's captain, hardly oozes 'personality'. And Wilkinson, the certain winner, is not so much leader of the pack as the man who prefers to hide behind it - at least, off the field.
Wilkinson will, however, prove an unusually worthy winner. He embodies the values of a 'world' beating team greater than the sum of its parts. In the last fortnight, we've witnessed the kind of honest endeavour - bereft of prima donnas - that seems out of place in today's sporting arena.
This Monday, as the maul rolled victoriously into Trafalgar Square, the crowds (despite the media hype) seemed not to be cheering for a galaxy of superstars, nor reveling in ugly jingoism, but celebrating something positively different.
We were sensing, perhaps, that sport - an ancient metaphor for life - doesn't always have to be the way we've come to expect it. Many footballers see their own World Cup as a shop-window to secure lucrative personal contracts; rugby's alternative - this time around, at least - seemed genuinely to lack such selfish ambition.
As if to drive the point home, Wilkinson booted Hello! magazine firmly into touch this week by refusing its million-pound offer to pose for a photo-shoot.
There's a heavenly whiff about this team spirit, evoking Paul's metaphor of the body. 'God has combined the members of the body ... so that there should be no division ... but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. ...If one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.'
The metaphor does not fit perfectly, of course. The players are human, whether or not Clive Woodward proves to be divine. But we have glimpsed - in the conduct of his men, in their attitude to fame and in their thrilling triumph - something that's better than usual.
The feeling may not last, but while it's fresh, we should explore what it was about last Monday - for the English, at least - that made the hairs on the back of our necks stand so unusually proud.
Brian Draper
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.
