England vs South Africa: Diverse and engaging, how Eddie Jones’ history-chasers became likeable

On Thursday, when the RFU’s official YouTube channel announced the England team to play South Africa in Saturday’s World Cup final, there was a nice little touch included. Alongside each of the players’ names was a photograph from their childhood days, as well as the team where they first started playing rugby. Mako Vunipola, Thornbury RFC. Kyle Sinckler, Battersea Ironsides. Tom Curry, Crewe & Nantwich RFC. And so on.

The point of this, I think, was to underline what deep down we all like to think international sport is about: not merely a clash of individuals or a flag-waving exercise, but a test of systems and societies. Underpinning this is the idea that you can draw a straight line, an unbroken link, from the Yokohama Stadium right back to the parks and gardens and streets where this generation first started flinging a ball around. Right back to the clubs and schools and families and communities that forged them. And that, in some abstract but important sense, these 23 men somehow represent us.

Does it hold true? Not perfectly. Rugby union in England can scarcely shrug off its connotations of affluence and class privilege when 17 of the 31-man squad have been privately educated, a proportion that roughly mirrors the Premiership as a whole. The talent at Eddie Jones’s disposal is a product not simply of the English grassroots system, but of market forces and Britain’s ability to lure the best talent from other nations into its own fold.

Would, say, the Vunipolas have been so warmly received on the streets of this country had they not been so good at rugby? Would Manu Tuilagi have avoided deportation from the UK in 2009 had he just been a regular Samoan immigrant who illegally overstayed his visa, rather than a rising star of the Leicester Tigers team with petitions being launched in his name? There’s often a rank hypocrisy in the way sport lionises itself as some great, colour-blind progressive force. As in many other countries, until the moment somebody decides you can make them some money, your background couldn’t be more relevant.

But in the face of all this, something strange has happened. The England men’s rugby union team, historically one of the most objectionable sporting teams on the planet, has become weirdly and disconcertingly likeable. They have made a virtue of their wildly diverse origins, both on the pitch and off. They come across, in their interactions with the wider world and with each other, as human beings with hinterlands rather than characterless meat towers. And when they step out on Saturday evening against South Africa, it’s possible a few people back home will find themselves, against their every learned and ingrained instinct, quietly cheering them on.

Partly, you suspect, this is a triumph of shrewd marketing. But only partly. English rugby has long been aware of its own image problem, and since the nadir of 2011 has worked hard to build bridges with its public, through both conventional media and digital. Stuart Lancaster began the process, establishing a culture of honest graft that abruptly foundered when England couldn’t get out of their 2015 World Cup group on home soil. There was a sound lesson there: you can instil all the humble principles and enact all the key engagement strategies you like. But when it comes down to it, people like backing winners.

Eddie Jones recognised this as soon as took the job of England coach. If his side beat South Africa on Saturday, the eulogies will flow. Jones will be lauded as a genius, his players heralded as heroes, their return greeted by cheering throngs, their lives changed forever. Everything they did or were will be reverse-engineered to explain their triumph. It was because of their culture. Their diversity. Their fearless patriotic spirit. Jones’s media strategy. Steve Borthwick’s line-out tactics. The fact that you can have all these things in abundance and still lose is a largely overlooked point. Winners get to write their own eulogies.

So how do you deal with that knowledge: the knowledge that so much hangs on these 80 minutes of rugby, that the course of your life could be changed by a dodgy refereeing call, a freak injury, a lucky bounce? This is perhaps where England have been most impressive of all: they don’t claim to have all the answers. They don’t worry about what they can’t control. They offer no guarantees. “Expect the unexpected” is one of Jones’s mottos, and in a scenario that none of England’s players will have experienced before, an awareness of their own basic powerlessness is a strength, not a weakness.

South Africa’s predictability as a side can occasionally be overplayed: they certainly can play, especially when Faf de Klerk and Handre Pollard get some time and space, when they fling the ball to Cheslin Kolbe and Makazole Mapimpi to steam up the wings. But make no mistake: when Mako Vunipola says the forward battle is going to decide the match, he isn’t just sticking up for his position. If England start getting shoved off their own ball, losing collisions, losing line-outs, fraying at the scrum, it could be an extremely long evening for them.

Against that is the knowledge that even a defence as rigid as South Africa’s has offered up openings. They may have conceded just three tries in six matches, but even Japan had several opportunities to breach them during their quarter-final, only to make the wrong decision at the critical moment. England have pace and craft in abundance; the selection of George Ford, meanwhile, is a big statement that England intend to dictate the pace, to play the sort of game they want to play.

Will it heal a divided country? No. Will it solve Brexit? No. Will it be fun to watch? Actually no, probably not. Even Jones admitted with a wry smile on Thursday that any residual feel-good factor would probably have evaporated by the time of the general election. But for a couple of hours, we might just get to see this impressive group of young men, from different backgrounds and with different stories to tell, winning the biggest prize of their lives. A journey that they may have started apart, but are finishing together.