Boarding a plane headed for England is never much fun – 24 hours in a fart-filled fuselage isn’t really anyone’s idea of a good time – but the real dread for myself was what would happen when I landed.
My concerns were allayed for two short hours, as I watched the Knights push the Roosters all the way on Round 14 – how good is being able to watch live sport in cattle class?! – but by the time we were circling Manchester Airport, my anxieties were in full flight.
Specifically, how were the Poms going to treat this Aussie cricket fan in the light of the goings-on in Cape Town?
Even though the sandpaper saga had nothing to do with England, I expected to cop heaps, because, well, that’s just what happens, isn’t it? We give the Poms a roasting over virtually anything, so have to expect the same when we’ve disgraced ourselves as badly as we did in South Africa.
I was not let down – even my mother-in-law, who couldn’t care less about sport, knew that Australia were a bunch of low-down dirty cheats.
Australia’s tour of England didn’t go so well. (Photo: Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
Of course, being part of a cheating nation was soon forgotten – or, more accurately, replaced – as Australia set about getting absolutely thrashed by England in the one-day series.
I thought perhaps I’d get some respite from the taunting by making a trip to my adopted home city of Liverpool – where the locals proudly declare, “I’m not English, I’m Scouse” – but then the Aussies headed to Nottingham for the third match of the series.
Winning the toss, new skipper Tim Paine took a look at the road masquerading as a cricket pitch and decided he’d like to field first.
A world record 481 runs later and my hopes of merely talking music and perhaps getting a bit of sympathy for how hard-done-by the Socceroos had been against France were utterly dashed.
Of course, even in Liverpool, I copped it!
Clearly, I wasn’t going to get any love from the English, so I made my way across the Irish Sea for a weekend in Galway.
Where the English and Australians have a relationship based on light-hearted insults and banter – like competitive siblings, with plenty of scraps but an underlying love – we have a far more cordial set-up with the Irish, more like that cousin you’re best mates with.
No, I’d do nothing but sink Guinness and drunkenly sing ‘The Wild Rover’ while in Eire.
Ha!
I arrived just in time to see the Irish win their first rugby union series on Aussie soil since the 1970s, and any hopes of simply slipping under the radar were torched by the fact I was knocking about with a bunch of mates who had attended Belfast Royal Academy – one of the world’s great rugby nurseries.
Bernard Foley of the Wallabies. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Honestly, it was probably for the best, as if that final pass – after the siren – had stuck and the Wallabies had won, I wonder if I’d have made it out of the pub alive.
That Sunday morning was spent travelling back to Belfast, and one of the lads was good enough to let me watch State of Origin on his phone. Coverage was sketchy at best, so we missed a lot of the game, and the bus was full of hungover English and Irishmen – NSW won, but my jubilation was somewhat muted.
Back in Old Blighty, I went to watch the Socceroos’ futile efforts against Peru in an empty pub – it was literally just me and a barmaid who gave me the remote control and disappeared into the kitchen. My brother-in-law was good enough to join me for the final half hour, by which stage the 2-0 scoreline made it clear Australia would not be progressing to the round of 16.
(Photo by Stuart Franklin – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
We returned to York just in time to have further salt rubbed into the cricketing wound, as the green and gold received yet another lesson in the art of T20 cricket, giving us a record of 0-6 for the tour of the Old Dart.
On our final night, with the Socceroos on a plane home from Russia, I finally embraced the Poms – my wife is English, many of my best mates are English, I spent four of the best years of my life in England, I’m of English heritage, and if we have kids they’ll be half-English – by deciding to pledge my allegiance for the rest of the World Cup to England.
So England lost to Belgium. Of course.
In three weeks, I made it to Spain, York, Liverpool, Belfast, Galway, and the Yorkshire Dales, and with England experiencing a once-in-a-decade heatwave, spent the whole time in 30-degree sunshine, with nary a drop of rain the entire trip.
It was utterly miserable.
An hour or so before boarding our departing flight from Manchester airport, my wife enquired with one of the duty-free employees about whether a bottle of gin would make it through Abu Dhabi airport.
The kindly gentlemen explained that the 24-hour bagging operation they ran would ensure it would get through the United Arab Emirates just fine, but that things might be a bit sketchy when we got to Sydney, “Because those Aussies are a bit mad.”
The wife kindly informed him that I was one such madman, to which he looked me in the eye and said, “You should learn to play cricket properly.”
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