England goes bonkers

This weekend might very well become one of the most successful weekends in England sport history. Saturday night the England rugby team will play against South Africa in the Rugby World Cup final. On Sunday rookie racer Lewis Hamilton might become the first English Formula 1 champion in more than ten years.

Big deal, most Dutch people reading this will think. Formula 1 isn’t all that big in Holland and rugby is virtually non-existent. But the English do care and they are going nuts about it.

It’s comparable to the situation in Holland when the Dutch football team is playing in a World or European Cup (although English fans do not dress up as orange lions and milk maids). For the past week or so all you read about in the newspapers is rugby. Rugby madness has also taken over the television broadcasts; even the BBC has nonsense items about rugby players’ wives yapping about nothing and showing childhood pictures of their husbands.

This morning I was shocked when I found out that they put a statue of Jonny Wilkinson (think of him as the Dennis Bergkamp of the English rugby team) on one of the plinths at Trafalgar Square (!!!). This is so typical of the smug and prideful English. When they win or are about to win something, they want the whole world to know how absolutely marvelous they are. But when they loose, like the English football team did against Russia this Wednesday thus jeopardizing their qualification for next years European Championship, you’ll barely hear anyone about it.

Bah.

Anyway.

60,000 English fans have invaded Paris, the city where the final is being played. Mind you, in 1415 it took King Henry V only 10,000 men to conquer most of France. An estimated 16 million people across England are expected to watch the game on television. About 12 million people – 2 million of them in London – will see the match in a pub or restaurant, drinking an estimated 65 million pints over the weekend. Even if the England team loses, it will be a golden weekend for pubs all across the nation.

Meanwhile the 150,000-strong South African community in London will be taking over most of the pubs and bars in the south-west of the city. The odds are in their favor: during the group game at the start of the tournament the South African team thrashed the English with 36-0. South Africa are the better team, but you never know; four years ago the English won the world title against all odds too…

Anyway, I’m glad this whole rugby madness will be over soon. It’s like the whole of England has been having sex for a week now, slowly working towards this enormous climax. Let’s hope the final orgasm this weekend won’t be a disappointment.

Jonny Wilkinson