Groucho
Greg Davis (50)
It's time to trample on the daffodils
What ho, Englishmen!
“Australians come of bad stock” – Winston Churchill
"We called them daffodils: they were beautiful to look at but yellow right through" - British officer after the fall of Singapore
So the Autumn rugger bandwagon rolls on. Next up: Australia. England need to be awfully careful about this one, chaps. A nation’s values are revealed in its rugger team and, in the case of Australia, those values are manifestly repugnant to any right-thinking Englishman. The yellow-bellied Wallabies don’t like to win matches by getting down and dirty in the trenches and sticking their heads up other blokes’ arses for eighty minutes – the honest, manly, British way of playing rugger. No, the Aussies prefer to win by skipping around the field like girls, doing their damndest to elude the opposition’s clutches by employing jazzy side-steps and whizzy backs moves. This frivolous style of rugger is decidedly rum and borders on the dishonest, but the IRB, perhaps for paternalistic reasons of Empire solidarity, refuses to sanction the blighters.
Australia's sneaky rugger is, naturally enough, a product of its decidedly inferior breeding. As Blondy2 observed on a recent post, today’s colonials are the descendents of light-fingered East End pickpockets and cunning Irish peasants. Consequently, and notwithstanding some honourable exceptions, our colonial friends tend to lack moral fibre. Bruce Shackledragger will run a mile from the prospect of an honest, manly confrontation but give him the sniff of a sneaky ambush or a sledge-at-twenty-paces and the scoundrel will have you hoodwinked before you can shout “convict!”
Of course, just occasionally, John Bull manages to collar our pesky colonial before he can scarper, and then something quite delicious tends to ensue: the yellow-bellied Australian is given a beasting the likes of which Max Mosley can only fantasise about. In 2005 and 2007, this took the form of Andrew Sheridan pushing Fat Boy Dunning’s spine so far up his own backside that, to this day, poor Dunning is still forced to apply Savlon to his nether regions both morning and night. Something similar occurred in the summer when Steve Thompson monstered Mr Fainga'a so brutally that Australian broadcasters were forced to apologise to viewers for transmitting such extreme sado-masochistic violence before the watershed. There are plenty of other comical Aussie no-hopers who have received similar treatment in recent years; one thinks of Guy Shepherdson, Liefemi “Being Fat Doesn’t Mean I Can Scrummage” Mafi and a certain Al “Eyes of Fury, Spine of Jelly” Baxter.
Those jokers won’t be playing on Saturday. Instead, the Australian front row is likely to comprise Robinson, Moore and Alexander. This trio is a rather sterner prospect than usual, to be sure, but given the unadulterated bully boy prowess of our sturdy Saxon yeomen, Sheridan, Hartley and Cole, we can confidently expect another orgy of beastliness at Twickers come kick-off. In earnest, chaps, no one metes out a monstering quite like an Englishman!
The key, as ever, will be to nab the flighty colonials before they skip in several tries past us. Last week’s shoddy first half defence doesn’t inspire confidence in this regard. Nor does the lumbering form of our twin behemoth centres, Tindall and Hape, who look for all the world like a couple of East End pub bouncers who have stumbled onto the old cabbage patch by mistake.
But the Australia back-line, whilst sublimely talented, has no more pluck than its pack. Beale is a splendid runner but tends to balls things up under pressure. Giteau is a convicted choke merchant in front of the posts. Cooper is captivating on the eye but quickly goes missing when given a clatter, as was illustrated perfectly by Captain Moody MBE in the summer; and Cooper’s feather-duster tackling would embarrass even Ronan O’Gara. All things considered, there is nothing to frighten England, provided that constant pressure is applied.
Ultimately, we can expect breeding to win the day. For all the plebs who litter the England squad nowadays, the Red Rose can still call on men of formidable lineage – chaps like Easter and Moody who have been bred in some of our finest sporting public schools and raised on traditional British values. Remember, too, that in Mr Tindall MBE, we field a gentleman fit to squire the Queen’s grand-daughter about town. Set against this pukka mob of bloody good blokes, what can the Australians offer? Churchill would hardly be surprised to learn that the answer is: not a lot, merely a few frit Islanders and a few yellow sons-of-proles. Given such deplorable breeding, is it any wonder that the chaps in gold tend to cower at the first sight of an English fist?
So give the walking cane a twirl as you saunter along to Twickenham this Saturday afternoon, chaps. Pack the hamper with some champers for a good old knees-up in the West Car Park afterwards. But it might be wise to leave the nippers back in the shires, for the bully boy antics of England’s pack will in no way be fit for family viewing. It is said that when John Bull is in the mood for a feast, and when Wallaby is on the menu, God himself shudders up in heaven!
God Save The Queen!
Yours, etc
Viscount Crouchback
http://viscount.typepad.com/
