Advent 8

Yesterday we had the image that has come to haunt English football. Today we have the picture that warms the heart of English rugby fans but with every passing year makes those fans yearn for the good old days: Martin Johnson lets out a triumphal roar and holds the Webb Ellis Cup aloft.

Of all the achievements of Northern Hemisphere rugby (and I include in this the astounding Lions teams of the seventies) I just about rate the 2003 world Cup win as the pinnacle. Johnson was at the forefront - indomitable and suitably vicious, the man others followed unquestioningly. The team was put together with obsessive drive by the frankly bonkers Clive Woodward. Luck played its part - for example Johnson was not Woodward's first choice as captain - that was Dallaglio who got blown out of the water (but not out of the team - Woodward always knew which side his bread was buttered) by that unlamented journalistic coup, a New of the World entrapment. As Millwall fans and Brian Moore have been known to say: no one likes us, we don't care.