Sour smell of success
Simon Barnes
IT seems now like a dispatch from the Dark Ages of sport, but in fact it was only six years ago that Will Carling, the England rugby union captain, was a fag-paper away from the sack after referring to his sport's administrators as '57 old farts'. The remark was televised to a bemused nation, and all at once there was revolution in the air.
The old farts hated the modern England set-up, hated the way the players were famous and were increasingly able to make money from the game. It wasn't like that in our day. These cocky young buggers need taking down a peg or two; and when England lost there was quiet delight the length and breadth of fartdom.
Carling was the principal hate-object, of course: young, gabby, self-possessed, and transparently milking his reputation for all it was worth in his 'motivation' business. But, almost as an answer to a prayer, he seemed to have delivered himself into the enemy's hands with a single unguarded remark, The old farts readied themselves for the gentlemanly coup: the thumbs-down in the committee room, the politely expressed regrets, the thanks for past services. But before the committee could meet, a ferocious counter-coup was in progress.
It's not Carling that's wrong, it's the old farts. The team is great, it is well-loved, it is mostly winning. Players and coaches, all those at the sharp end of the game lined up with Carling. The press released a tsunami of pro-Carling, anti-fartist sentiments.
And the Carling faction won. He stayed as captain, the terrific side of the Nineties continued to beat allcomers (in the northern hemisphere, anyway) and the game was never quite the same again. Now the same people, now ex-players, have been setting up a coup themselves. An informal alliance of leading players from the Nineties have lined up to criticise the current side and, in particular, its manager, Clive Woodward, Their line is that the players should have won a grand slam in the Six Nations championship for each of the last three years, and that falling short was 'not what the players deserved'. Newspapers have been full of explayers declaring it was all better in their day. Not the fitness or the skill, and certainly not the money, but the attitude — that's what these young people don't understand. By God, it was the attitude we had in those days that carried us through when times were hard.
Which all goes to show that it doesn't take long for a Young Turk to become an Old Fart, because the informal whispering campaign is nothing less than fartism come again. Of course, it is all dressed up in modern sportspeak, and each individual makes it clear that he is doing it for the best possible motives, and that he has nothing to declare but his goodwill towards English rugby.
But behind it all is the truth: that we are all too old to play rugby for England, and it sucks. The coup became unstuck when England beat the world champions, Australia, a fortnight ago, in a powerful and tactically immaculate match, and last Saturday they beat Romania by a record score of 134-0.
But the mutterings continue. Sport is cruel; it forces a person to retire from all that he loves and does best at the age when most of us are hitting our stride. In sport, you grow old and are discarded frighteningly soon.
Where have all the young men gone? Turned into old farts, every one — When will they ever learn?
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