My Favourite Year - 2003
Twenty years on, the third year of the third millennium is still in a league of its own.
It wasn’t all gold, 2003. For one thing, I spent a week in hospital with depression. For another, I had to see a psychiatrist for six weeks, although since the gentleman’s name was Tom Jones, this provided countless wonderful opportunities to enquire whether my state of mind was in any way unusual.
You need the bad times to add context to the good, though, and the aforementioned lows were capped by some quite incredible highs. For one thing, cum 2003, I was on the staff of the Australian version of Empire magazine. Had you asked me what job I’d like when I was at university, I’d have said this; or at least I would have had such an iteration of the publication existed at the time and had I been in love with Australia in the mid-1990s which I wasn’t by dint of my never having been there.
Additionally, I was living in the nicest place I’ve lived as an adult - a flat overlooking Sydney’s Rushcutter’s Bay - with a bloody great roommate in the shape of ace architect Anton Kouzmin. It was here we would celebrate Anton’s 30th birthday with a most remarkable party; one that had two DJs, a Red Bull sponsorship, an after party, and the presence of one Al Baxter, New South Wales Warratah and future Wallaby.
Furthermore, 2003 was the year where I went from being rubbish with women to being, well… alright with women. To say more would be ungallant. However, a year I entered alone I left with someone I’d spend the next decade with. And in between times, I was fortunate to walk in Robin Askwith-style shoes for a few months.
But what really made 2003 a year for the ages was that the only thing I’d ever wanted to see happen in the world of sport actually happened. Sure, had I been younger, I’d have been longing to see England win the Ashes, and if I was a less casual football fan, the 30 years of hurt might actually have felt painful. However, as someone who’d played rugby union since the age of six, the dream of seeing England win the Rugby World Cup had been with me ever since the tournament’s inauguration in 1987.
And in 2003, I had no doubt we’d win. Believe me, this is one of the very things in any field I’ve ever been certain about. However, after the trio of victories the previous English Autumn against New Zealand, Australia and South Africa (viewed at some ugly hour in Scruffy Murphy’s, Sydney’s equivalent of the Savoy) and our successful Six Nations campaign (the culmination of which I witnessed in a bar in Sydney’s Kings Cross; a place that makes London’s Kings Cross look like Marylebone High Street), victory that November seemed all but assured.
Indeed, even the one thing Australian fans had long held over the heads of we English, the fact we’d never won a test Down Under, was no longer a factor what with us having battered the Wallabies in Melbourne in June. And I was there to see it! Yes, me, my wonderful parents, a nice Japanese couple who were supporting England and hordes of really pissed-off Wallabies fans were present at a thrashing that was so much more comprehensive than the 25-14 score line suggested.
I was also present in Perth when England beat the Springboks in their second Rugby World Cup fixture the following October. Yes, I wasn’t going to let a full work schedule and Australia’s crippling geography prevent me from following Martin Johnson’s men to the best of my abilities. Having heard some bad things about Perth, I’d like to say that the 11 hours I spent in the city were just wonderful, as was the three hour lay-over I had in Adelaide the following day and the 16-hour overnight train journey I endured from Melbourne to Sydney the same evening. It wasn’t all bad, mind you - I arrived home just in time for work on Monday morning and, anyway, I’d been able to take in the beauty of Goulburn, the NSW cattle town that gave the world George Lazenby.
That I wasn’t able to get to the Samoa game in Melbourne was no bad thing, especially given the scare the South Pacific giants gave England. I did, however, fly up to Brisbane for the Uruguay match during which our section of crowd were nice enough to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me.
Had I not been so busy at work and so short on holiday dates, I might have been back in Brisbane for the England-Wales quarter final. Instead I watched the match with my great friend and ace rugby league biographer Andrew Quirke in Darling Harbour. With the Welsh threatening to overwhelm a lackluster England, it ought to have been a pretty traumatic occasion but fortunately me and Andrew had taken the precaution of spending 14 hours in the pub, what with us having got up early the same morning to watch the Great Britain-Kangroos rugby league test. Comfortably numb, we were no more surprised that England won the day than we were that we were actually still awake come the hour of glory.
Andrew was also to hand the following week as we headed to Sydney’s Stadium Australia for the semi-final confrontation against the French. With us was my father who’d flown over especially for the occasion. I’m not sure what either he or Andrew remember of that night but I have three specific memories i) the conditions were as bad as any in which I’ve seen top-flight rugby played; ii) Jonny Wilkinson’s kicking that night’s the sort of sporting feat people ought to be singing songs about; and iii) the moment the game was over, the DJ whacked The Beatles on the sound system and me, my friend and my father danced to ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. Oh yes, and the French - being bloody good about the beating they’d received - spent the train journey back to Sydney CBD teaching us their favourite terrace anthems. All this plus a cameo appearance from Tomorrow’s World’s Howard Stapleford - nights like this simply don’t come along often enough.
And so to the final.
I had actually been offered tickets to the big game but it was only a pair so one of us would have had to miss out (sorry, Dad) and it wasn’t as if I was going to see much change out of $3,500 AUS. So it was that we headed for Sydney’s most marvellously monikered district, The Rocks, and took our seats in a favourite watering hole, The Mercantile Hotel.
I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow account of the game, other than to say that, even when the Wallabies took an early lead, I felt confident we’d come out of top.
At least, that was until Elton Flatley equalised with the last kick of the match sending the game into extra time.
With the tension having finally got to us, we three, we happy three, we band of fathers and blood brothers headed onto Sydney’s main drag, George Street, above which the game was screening on two vast screens. As we edged our way towards the viewing area, it became apparent that we were outnumbered by Australian fans in a ratio similar to the one by which the Persians outnumbered the Spartans at Thermopylae. What’s more, when we finally found a place where we could stop and take in the last throes of the match, we happened to be outside a café run by Wallaby legend and England bug bear David Campese. It would’ve been a helluva place to be had we lost. But it was a bloody great place to be when we won.
And you know what? Ever since, no other sports victory has felt so great nor any sporting defeat felt too painful. Once in a while, it’s lovely when you get something you wanted but could do absolutely nothing about attaining. And what made things all the sweeter was the knowledge that, halfway across the world, rugby clubs like my own in Welwyn would be savouring the same moment; the day when England became World Champions and we could die happy knowing that we wouldn’t die wondering.
Oh yes, and also in 2003, I had lunch with Stephen Fry and tea with David Attenborough and both occasions were as wonderful as you’d image they might be!
I’m not one for living in the past per so, but once in a while, it’s another country that’s bloody nice to revisit.