Family fortunes
Simon Barnes
I KNOW just how Australians of the rugby-watching tendency will be feeling right now. That's because my father beat me at pingpong last time we played. Last weekend, in an utterly unexpected double whammy, England beat Australia at rugby union and Great Britain beat Australia at rugby league.
And, like my father beating me at pingpong, this is just not supposed to happen. We went through a time when he always beat me, and then a period when the games were mostly shared. We play an almost identical game — loud, flashy, negligible defence — but I began to shade the matches on mobility and stamina.
It was always close, but I always won; that, it was clear, is the way the universe operates. He is in his seventies now and he hadn't beaten me in an age. So he reeled off two immaculate games, the flailing forehand never missing, and I was left head-wagging my way back to the fridge for a champagne reviver.
Australia simply don't get beaten at rugby by the parent country. They are younger, sprightlier, hungrier. They are not hidebound by traditions of sloppy amateurism and woolly ethical thinking. They have put their considerable intelligence into the art of winning, and have created two unstoppable teams. Beating the Poms — beating up their dad — has become one of Australia's routine pleasures.
But at Twickenham on Saturday England beat the Australian rugby-union side by being more professional, better prepared, better able to think on their feet, and, above all, by believing that they were the better side. In Huddersfield the following day, the Great Brits won through passionate organisation and a try close to the end.
This was by far the more astounding victory. Improvements in the England rugbyunion side have been obvious over the past couple of years, but the rugby-league Australians never get beaten by the Poms. They have won every series since 1973, and the last time they lost a match was in 1994 at Wembley, on a similarly improbable occasion that required Jonathan Davies to score the try of a lifetime. The weekend's results have left the Australians more baffled than anything else. Pom-beating is a tradition. Changes aren't supposed to happen. The Australians had become hidebound by their own traditions of dominance.
Of course, the reason for the improvement in the Englistaritish teams is clear enough: they have worked and worked to be as much like the Australians as possible. Anything that can be borrowed from Australian sporting traditions has been spatchcocked on to British life, including, in the case of the rugby-league boys, an Australian coach.
Thus we have the unusual family dynamic of the parent hero-worshipping the child, and doing everything possible to live up to its example. It has been said that parents often grow up to be a disappointment to their children. That had certainly been the case in both codes of rugby. But this weekend the parent assumed a new youthfulness — of vision and ambition rather than of wind and limb — and left the child panting in its wake. Still, I know what the Australians are thinking. That's because I'm thinking the same thing myself. Jolly well played. And next time, 0 my respected and aged parent, I'll wipe the bloody floor with you.
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