Simon Barnes

Maro Itoje is a national hero for our time

The rugby star shows how sport can unite us

Sport is a paradox. It’s supposed to be. Sport divides, but then again, sport unites. The England rugby union team play in the World Cup final in Japan on Saturday morning, thereby dividing the English from the South Africans, and dividing those who follow the game into two camps — England supporters and everybody else. Closer to home, it divides the English most particularly from the Welsh, who suffered the great misfortune of losing their semi-final to the South Africans.

But in these times of bitter divisions — perhaps the deepest the country has known since the time of the General Strike — England will, at least for a couple of hours, feel united. Above all, the country will be united behind the player who dominated England’s semi-final against New Zealand, until that day the mightiest team in world rugby.

This one player epitomised all the power and the glory of old England. He was majestic and ferocious, but at the same time everything he did had an aura of extraordinary calm and certainty. That was Maro Itoje.

He was at the heart of this remarkable England performance. It’s very rare to see an England team in any sport play with that sense of authority: as if, right from the whistle, they were the natural and inevitable winners. We associate such authority with New Zealand in rugby, Australia in cricket and Brazil in football. I last saw it in an England football team in the semi-finals of the 1966 World Cup, in the England Test match cricket team in Australia in 2010-11 and, before last Saturday, in the England rugby team of 2002, the year before they won the World Cup.

The England player who imposed this mood of authority on the New Zealand match was Itoje.

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