Connect: Australia and England clash today in the final of rugby's biggest tournament, inflatedly termed a "world" cup. Australia, the defending champions, are seeking to win the Webb Ellis Trophy for a third time. England, like all other countries north of the equator, has never won it. In that sense, England are underdogs. Consequently, they might be expected to attract the widespread support of neutrals.
However, they won't. England's coach, Clive Woodward, is generally perceived as an insufferably arrogant man who presides over a monumentally boring, albeit effective team. Goal-kicking fly-half Jonny Wilkinson routinely kicks England to victory against teams considered to have greater flair. Unsurprisingly the International Rugby Players' Association has named him player of the year for the second year in succession.
Had Ireland a rugby team as consistently formidable as England's, practically all Irish people would support them or, at least, wish them well in a major final. English people are no different. Class warriors aside, the English - whether they watch the match or not - will naturally want an England victory. Should they get it, global supremacy, albeit in a minority sport, will be celebrated jingoistically.
The same would happen here. Remember that even reaching the last eight of the 1990 soccer World Cup (alright, the real World Cup!) drew an estimated 300,000 people onto the streets of Dublin. The national mood would, of course, be jingoistic. We would see and hear the best and the worst of Ireland in victory. Yet few Irish people would be likely to consider Irish celebrations characterised by arrogance.
Certainly, sensible people would fear excesses of George Hook-style rugger-bugger bluster. But allowing for such inevitable alickadoodom and a spate of Clongownian clowning, an Irish triumph would be celebrated as a victory for Celtic passion, never-say-die spirit and probably the natural talent of a few of the "goys". Even in class-ridden Irish rugby (I know Limerick is different but it's not quite defining) its tone would be different from that expected of England.
Mind you, an England in interminable transition from imperial power to the 51st state of the US could do with a win. This week's visit by George Bush ominously emphasised the inequality of American-British political relations. The giant canopy erected outside Buckingham Palace was a garish, indeed cartoonish effort. Its Disneyland aesthetics seemed more suited to a US-style fast-food outlet. It really was more Dallas than Palace.
Perhaps the Disneyland canopy made Bush feel more at home but it certainly clashed with its backdrop even more violently than Australia and England will clash today. Protesters objected to the politics of a British Labour prime minister playing lap-dog to an exceptionally right-wing American president. However, even supporters of the Bush-Blair alliance must have squirmed at the aesthetics of the tent.
Anyway, England rugby supporters in Sydney will sing "God Save Your Queen" at Australians today. Sure, it's sporting banter and after their rejection of the chance to elect their own head of state, the Aussies arguably deserve no better. Still, if England couldn't save its own queen from having her 18th-century pile look like a colossal fast-food joint, the jibe will ring hollow. It will also push more Australians to vote for their country to become a republic.
There is, though it's fading, an historic sense of the convict versus the empire when Australia plays England. A win today for England might well renew an absurd superiority complex, thrashed throughout the last quarter-century by the convicts.
Alternatively, an Australian win could see an already suspiciously haughty tone become repugnant. Nonetheless, even allowing for increasingly distasteful Aussie swagger, they will not be characterised as "arrogant".
That label, though not reserved exclusively for England (and indeed, it may now be more commonly held to apply to Bushite Americans), suggests something more than triumphalism. It bespeaks not just a state of mind but a state of being inculcated by a governing and characterising posture. At its heart is a right-to-rule attitude and its linkage to unelected heads of state - dictators, royals, rulers by coup - is undeniable.
Such people provide a "justification" for arrogance. It becomes part of what appears to be a natural order and is disseminated throughout society. There is, of course, snobbery in every country and all varieties are objectionable. But English snobbery, though mercifully much diluted nowadays, retains a quality of arrogance seldom equalled in other parts of the developed world. That is why England will not attract much neutral support today.
Certainly, Woodward and his team's mechanical efficiency do little to charm neutrals. But if Wales, say, a once great rugby country, had reached today's final playing in similarly tedious style, most neutrals would still support them. It's not just the style of England's play that rugby followers find distasteful. It's the quality of English arrogance - a trait intensified by the largely well-to-do fan base of that sport.
In that sense, today's final marks more than a sporting occasion. The persistence of English arrogance beyond the duration of the British empire, which this week had its central symbol garishly Disney-fied, embarrasses many British people now.
Although rugby could do with a European winner, even the Scots and the Welsh will cheer for Australia. That says it all, really.