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When the England rugby team run out at Twickenham on Saturday afternoon, they do so bearing the colours of the patron saint of England, St George. Born George of Anici, to a noble farming family, he was so named because George meant “worker of the land”.
These days his brawny descendants in the England pack plough up the turf with their boots in tribute.
St George once killed a dragon, and if you ask a native Englisher to recount the story, they’ll do so in a charming dialect. My cockney is limited to the alphabet (a-for-‘orses, b-for-chicken, c-for-yerself, and so on), but I have attempted to reproduce the story of St George in cockney to give you an idea.
Ahem.
“Ere’s the Daily Mail. Once a dragon made ‘is uncle-ned at the edge of a shake-and-shiver near the city of Silene in Libya, and settled down for a bo-peep. The townspeople ‘ad to dislodge the bandwagon from ‘is uncle-ned each day in order to collect half-and-a-quarter.
So each day they offer the bandwagon a weasel-and-stoat, and if they can’t find no weasel-and-stoat, then a twist-an-twirl ‘as to go instead of the weasel-and-stoat.
“They choose the twist-an-twirl by drawin’ straws, an’ one day, this ‘appens to be the king’s bricks-and-mortar. The ring-a-ding-ding begs for ‘er life wiv no result. She gets served up to the bandwagon, but the saint appears on his bottle-o-sauce with a big sword across ‘is fleetwood-mac. He airs-and-graces the bandwagon an’ protects himself with the sign of the cross.
Then ‘e whacks it one on the errol-flynn, kills it brown bread and rescues the tutti-frutti. Bright an breezy.”
Or something like that.
So it’s easy to see why the British have adopted him as their patron saint.
St George was born in Palestine, allegedly killed a dragon in Libya, joined the army in Rome, was martyred on the shores of the Black Sea and entombed in his birthplace of Palestine, so um yeah.
As folk singer Billy Bragg so aptly put it. “St George was born in the Lebanon, how he got here I don’t know.”
Interestingly, St George is not only the patron saint of England, but also the patron saint of Lithuania, Malta, Portugal and … wait for it … Germany.
Don’t mention the war.
As for being the patron saint of skin and syphilitic diseases, the less said the better, although certain England players from the 2008 New Zealand tour may be glad of the added protection.
St George was also responsible for one of Australia’s greatest moments in Test rugby in the UK in 1984 when the Aussies won a Grand Slam by defeating all four Home nations.
I’m referring now, of course, not the venerable dragon-slicer, but to the mighty rugby league club from Kogarah in Sydney’s south. Not too many people know that the move Mark Ella called to put himself over against England at Twickenham, was actually a move that the Wallabies had borrowed from the mighty St George league team and dubbed “Leaguie.”
With the score at 3-all in London on November 3, 1984, Mark Ella called “Leaguie,” as a scrum packed close to the English line. Ella passed to Lynagh and looped, before noticing that the defence had moved up quickly. Upon receiving the ball again, he dummied to Gould who would normally have received the ball, and went behind the defence under the posts.
Ella said after the match, “The Pommy papers screamed blue murder and alleged that the move was obstruction. Cheating they called it. I never called that move again on the whole tour. It worked when we most needed it, and that was enough.”
Ella retired after the Grand Slam, and was almost lured to rugby league, by a massive offer from a Sydney club which would have made him the richest player in league, earning more than Australian captain Wally Lewis.
Which club? St George, of course.
This weekend, the George theme continues.
Australia’s own Patron Saint of the Openside, George Smith, becomes the second-most-capped-Wallaby-against-England behind another legendary George, George Gregan. Gregan faced England 16 times in his career, and George Smith will take his tally to 11 with his return to the starting lineup this weekend.
No other Wallaby has played England more times than the two Georges.
Unfortunately for Gregan, his otherwise stellar career was an unhappy one against England. His first Test against England was the quarter-final loss in the 1995 World Cup. His final Test, both against England and for Australia, was the quarter final loss in RWC 2007.
He was also captain of the Wallabies when they lost to England in the RWC final in 2003, although he did exact some small measure of retribution when he captained the Wallabies to a 51-15 win over the English in Brisbane in 2004.
Smith’s career against England would hardly afford him many better memories than Gregan, although he would take comfort in the fact that the England players would definitely prefer he wasn’t there.
His first Test against England was the 22-19 loss at Twickenham in 2000, when Dan Luger scored in the 8th minute of injury time to win the match. The news didn’t get any better for Smith in 2001 and 2002, losing both matches at Twickenham – 21-15 and then a heartbreaking 32-31 result, despite Smith putting Wendell Sailor over after a delightful chip and chase.
In 2003, Smith continued to finish up on the wrong side of the ledger, losing in Melbourne 25-14 and then again in the World Cup final 20-17.
In fact, it wasn’t until Smith had been in the Test side for nearly 5 years that he tasted success against the English in Brisbane 2004 under his captain Gregan.
But this time he is at the height of his powers, having been a standout performer in almost every Test he has played for the last 3 years. His flick-along to Drew Mitchell for a Wallaby try in Hong Kong showed that his skills are as good as most elite backs. His work and intuition on the ball have rarely been better, and his weight is perfect, now that the ghastly Smith-as-number-8 experiment has faded into distant memory.
He has around him a resurgent pack, led by the most unlikely of candidates in Al Baxter. Baxter and Smith have been touring together since 2003 and are leading a forward pack intent on rewriting recent history. They would take heart from the words of another George (Bernard Shaw) who said, “We learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.”
Quite true, and in any case there is not much to see in the recent past against England.
George Burns got it right.
“Look to the future,” he said. “That’s where you’ll spend most of your time.”