Determinedly going it alone
UKRAINE. May the worst team win
This article was originally published on LinkedIn on 12 April 2022.
Image: Wesport: A guide to Rugby Union in the West of England (wesport.org.uk)
“I’ll not be home for lunch,” I would say to my mum at a Wednesday breakfast table.
“Oh, why not?”
“We’re away to Pock.”
“Pock?”
“Pocklington.”
“They good?”
“Pretty good, yeah.”
“Oh well, see you tonight. May the best team win.”
Kiss. Off to the bus.
May the best team win. May the best side win. May the best student pass. May the best person get the job. Except, we all know, maying isn’t getting.
Pocklington School played just about the best rugger in the county. They used to allow our 1st XV to play against their 2nd XV, so good they were. A sporting chance. My brother’s team were once castigated by our headmaster for beating an opponent 50-0. “You proved you were better. You didn’t need to run them down into humiliation.” Bowed heads from the victors of the game.
We Scots, some say, are born with a chip on our shoulder. “England. Humph.” The English often got the better of Scotland, but it gave us fighting spirit, a will to do our best, even if we weren’t the best team. A fair chance at victory, that’s all we asked for.
When Ally’s Tartan Army made it to the World Cup play-offs in 1982, Gordon-John Sinclair fronted a squad song that said it all in a very Scottish way. Sinclair is in his night-time reveries, playing for Scotland. There’s a penalty and “John Robertson, who normally takes them, is handing the ball to ME!” Then, he hears his old lady screaming blue murder: “It’s no the ba’ yer kickin’, ye eejit, it’s me!”
We Have a Dream was the name of the song, because, in 1982, Scotland had a dream. Just a dream; we knew we hadn’t much of a hope beyond that. And nor had we – Italy took the honours again. But we put up a hell of a fight down in Spain.
There’s a fight going on right now in central Europe and the experts had long since written off the Scotland of the piece, accorded victory to the Pocklington of it. And yet, the Kyiv dream of a victory against daunting odds could actually turn out a dream come true. Maybe.
The odds are evening out, but they’re not even. In a way, doped cyclists, bent football refs and dirty cheating trainers have shown that it’s not always the best team that wins, regardless of what mums say to their schoolboy sons. But in this fight, we wait with bated breath and there are those who hope against hope: to see whether the worst team does in fact prevail. Depending, that is, on who you view as the worst team.