What a weekend for English sport!  Sporting weekends do not get any better. There was English rugby’s epic cliffhanger in France. And lest we forget there was the small matter of a routine but conclusive 3-0 victory for our football lads in the Euro 2008 qualifier against Estonia.

First things first. England’s rousing World Cup semi-final victory against France left most of us with palpitations and a raging fever. Why is that our English sporting teams put us through hell? Two years ago, Michael Vaughan and his cricketing heroes regained the Ashes but only after several heart-stopping moments.

Now the comparisons between both the rugger and football boys are hardly worthy of mention. At Wembley Steve McClaren’s trusty soldiers sailed through their game against the lightweights of Estonia with some serenity. The match itself was over by half-time.

'England were bloody-minded, brutally adventurous in the scrum and fired up like the proverbial Ferrari'


Goals by the excellent Shaun Wright-Phillips and the revitalised Wayne Rooney completed a job that had to be done. Undoubtedly England were businesslike, professional and too good for their opponents.

But at the Stade de France the rugby operation was altogether different Only the fittest would survive here. For this English team this would be no ordinary shopping expedition in Tesco’s.

This was a cross-channel ferry that involved painstaking planning and strategic thinking. In sporting parlance Estonia and France are poles apart. Estonia were football’s answer to Tommy Cooper, silly magicians with plenty of mistakes and the greatest own goal of all time. England’s 3-0 win was never a contest.

In Paris, England’s rugby team beat France with everything Englishmen hold dear. They were bloody minded, brutally adventurous in the scrum and fired up like the proverbial Ferrari.

Now some of us simply glaze over at rugby vocabulary. Mention of scrum-halves and prop forwards leave this writer baffled. It remains one of the most fascinating of sports but the only abiding memory of the game lives on like a favourite piece of music.

At the Stade de France, Josh Lewsey, captain Phil Vickery, Simon Shaw, Andrew Sheridan and the jinking Jason Robinson all contributed to English rugby’s finest hour. It was never a vintage or stimulating display of international rugby but on the night it mattered a thousand times.

In a week’s time, English rugby will expect one more grandstand performance in the World Cup Final. Before then, our football foot soldiers will hopefully retreat from Moscow triumphant. Hopefully both teams won’t drive us to a collective nervous breakdown.

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