The rugby World Cup last year was enlivened by the oafish John O’Neill, the chief executive of the Australian Rugby Union, who told the world: “We all hate England.” He justified this bigotry by explaining that it was all down to England’s “born-to-rule mentality”.
Well, all I can say is that we could have done with a bit of born-to-rule mentality at Twickenham on Saturday. Here England disastrously displayed their born-to-be-ruled mentality, their born-to-bend-the-knee mentality, their ooh-er-we’re-actually-in-the-lead mentality.
And lost. Not lost as in came second, but lost from a position from which it was logically impossible to do anything other than win. Utterly dominant, a 13-point lead, playing with style and the beginnings of a swagger. These were the World Cup finalists against one of the also-rans.
Then collapse. It was extraordinary. It was not as if the Welsh upped their game significantly. Rather, it was that England couldn’t bear to be in front. They were overwhelmed by their own competence and chucked it away in horror.
Two colossal errors led to the tries - Jonny Wilkinson’s absurd gone-in-the-head long pass in the general direction of Danny Cipriani, Iain Balshaw’s charged-down kick. But they were just the stand-out examples in a catalogue of errors, dropped passes, mad passes, conceded penalties. It came from an inability to finish off beaten opponents, an inability to enforce authority, an overwhelming fear of victory.
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This was the rugby example of the England batting collapse, a process in which one man’s disaster leads to the next man’s disaster, till all are infected with the virus of defeatism. How many times have we seen England collapses, in cricket, in many another sport? How many times has an unbeatable lead been beaten?
In Adelaide, in December 2006, England were 551 for six declared against Australia and yet, in one of the most traumatic pieces of sport I have witnessed, they managed to lose. It was the collapsus collapsorum, the mother of all collapses, the collapse against which all other collapses shall be measured.
The England football team are also prone to collapse. At the European Championship finals of 2004, they were a goal up against France and had a penalty. David Beckham missed it, and Zin?dine Zidane scored twice in the closing minutes.
There is a more recent collapse, over a longer timescale. In the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign, England had rescued themselves from disaster with a series of 3-0 wins. They had reached a position in which they needed only a draw at home to qualify. They fell two goals behind to Croatia, came back to draw level, God’s in heaven, all’s right with the world. And then lost.
English individuals collapse, too. Lewis Hamilton should have won the Formula One drivers’ championship last year, but blew a winning lead. Tim Henman should have won Wimbledon in 2001, but failed to play the rain delays as well as Goran Ivanisevic.
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It is tempting, then, to go into a spiral of nationalistic self-hate: born losers, why do we always collapse? The fact of the matter is that collapses are part of sport. All nations, individuals of all nationalities, are prone to sporting collapse.
Let’s start at the top, in terms of wealth, power and self-esteem. The United States, Tiger Woods and all, have strung together a series of collapses in the Ryder Cup. The Australia cricket team are a byword for consistency and ruthlessness - they collapsed against England in 1981, and again against India in 2001, each time losing after enforcing the follow-on, losing from a position in which defeat was impossible.
Football’s world champions collapse. France against Senegal at the 2002 World Cup, Argentina against Cameroon in 1990. In rugby, Australia collapsed against England at the World Cup last year, while New Zealand - everybody’s favourite for the title - collapsed against France.
It is not true that whenever a team or an individual collapses in sport, England get royalties. It is just that when England collapse, they do it in an English accent. England collapse with a sad resignation, Americans collapse in total bewilderment, Australians with snarling resentment, the French with great style.
It is tempting to read some kind of post-imperial dismay into England’s collapses, but that affects only the style of them. It doesn’t make them happen. Because England don’t only collapse, they also win things. The England footballers beat Germany 5-1 in Munich in 2001 and reached the quarter-finals of three successive tournaments, the cricketers won the Ashes in 2005 on the back of a string of series wins, and the rugby players, lest we forget, won the World Cup of 2003. Sir Steve Redgrave and Sir Matthew Pinsent are both Englishmen, and they did all right.
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Collapse is part of sport. The weird chemistry of collapse, when minds freeze and the opposition feeds on the panic, is common not to the English but to the human condition. It’s just that English athletes do it in an English way.
But that sense of unease when totally dominant - is that more English than not? Is that something English people are more prone to than others, a feeling that if we are winning, something must be wrong? But being English doesn’t make you a loser, it just dictates the manner in which English people lose. On Saturday, it was a very English defeat.