It started out as a whisper,

a small national joke

at the expense of our once

blighted, blind devotion,

to a game, a pastime,

we believed with arrogance

that should always be ours

to hold aloft the greatest prize.

Like conquest, of Empire,

of taking what wasn’t ours,

we demanded it and we became

barbaric.

The whisper turned,

not out of self-importance

or crass, dogged egotism,

but out of hope,

that we might once again

be civilised about such things,