The hero returns

English sport had been at the bottom of the barrel until last Saturday. The cricket team was getting the life knocked out of them on their long tour of Australia, the football team was going from bad to worse and kept on in that direction this week losing at home to Spain playing probably the worst football of any England team in the last 30 years. The national rugby team was also on the floor losing eight of their last nine and then last Saturday in their first Six Nations game the saviour arrived, Jonny Wilkinson.

Wilkinson was the golden boy of English rugby, appearing in Adidas commercials with David Beckham and scored the winning drop goal in the 2003 World Cup Final against Australia in Sydney. That was the last game he played for England until last week, he’s had an incredible amount of injuries, operations, comebacks and more injuries and has hardly played rugby in three years. He’d only played 45 minutes this season but the new England coach Brian Ashton started him against Scotland and if you were writing a script you wouldn’t have changed anything.

He was the stand out player, scored 27 of England’s 42 points including the full set of try, conversion, drop goal and penalty goal and had to have 14 stitches in his lip halfway through the game and carried on putting in big the big hits. He got a standing ovation when he came off with a couple of minutes to go. The big test is tomorrow to see whether he can do it again a week later. Italy are the opponents at Twickenham, kickoff 1.30pm, and England should win, if Jonny Wilkinson can have another good game England fans will start believing again.
Here’s a clip of some 1st half highlights from the Scotland game.