Later on today I’m going with Jonny Taylor, one of my oldest friends, to watch England beat Wales at rugby.
My first visit to Twickenham was for the England final trial in January 1973. My Dad and I sat on a ringside bench at pitch level, almost on the touchline. I was colder than I have ever been, before or since, but David Duckham was playing, so I didn’t care.
It was an era when England were frankly not that strong, whereas Wales were all swagger and style, the team of Mervyn Davies, Gareth Edwards, Phil Bennett and JJ Williams. The contrast was too much to bear and my Dad raised me to see Wales as the team we not only wanted to beat but wanted to see beaten.
Since then, I’ve seen England play everyone, from the All Blacks to Italy and from Argentina to Fiji, but today will be my first Wales match. And I’ve been surprised by how viscerally I’ve found myself wanting to see England win and Wales get crushed.
Now I know that sporting rivalries are important to many of us: they root us in a community, help us belong. Even so, the sheer potency of this particular game has made me wonder whether I’m holding a little too tight to that inherited, childhood grudge.
The Bible is pretty clear about grudges. ‘You shall not bear a grudge against any of your people’, it says, ‘and love your neighbour as yourself’. But Jesus was pretty clear about who our neighbours are too, and it’s not just our own people. It’s also the foreigner. The stranger. The Welsh.
I’m pretty sure that it’s impossible (and undesirable) to do away with sporting rivalries. Imagine life without without Arsenal and Spurs, Liverpool and Everton, Dulwich and Tooting. But I reckon that they’re best left on the pitch.
So when I take my seat at Twickenham later on, I’ll remember that. I’ll think of my Welsh sister-in-law, Lesley, and my neighbours on the other side of the Severn Bridge and remind myself that it’s not the be-all and end-all. It’s not life and death. It’s not the moment I’ve been waiting for since 1973. No one needs to get crushed.
I’ll get things in proportion. And then England will beat Wales.
England did beat Wales, 12-6.