Doubtless England will eventually settle into a style they think suits them

Doubtless England will eventually settle into a style they think suits them. By all means call for more adventure, but rugby has a great deal of quick learning to do under its new pressures. Jack Rowell is beginning to resemble a manager of the England football team, and just as football has to live with imperatives laid down by wealthy club owners, so will rugby.Sport is fascinating no matter how it is served up and the fact that it doesn’t always work out as anticipated is a strength. By their very nature, these are not people to be found presenting their money at many turnstiles and they probably also figure among the siren voices calling for England to throw their natural reserve to the winds.They didn’t seem to mind the juggernaut’s caution when England were winning everything in sight. They’re being fed.Impartial viewers who judge a game by their own yardstick of quality will get their ration of satisfaction but, generally, those who don’t give a damn about the result are missing the point.

The essence of rewarding sports-watching is to be caught up in the action, to want one team to overcome the other. That’s why 2,500 people can be engrossed on a bitterly cold night in Darlington by a match most others would find tedious Don’t ask them if they’re being entertained. The true sports fan would not be grateful if he or she thought the players were more intent on entertaining him.Furthermore, there is a vast difference between the genuine supporter and those merely waiting for entertainment to occur. Indeed, the rarity is part of the enjoyment.At the centre of sport’s appeal is the anticipation of the contest, what is at stake and the fascination of watching the drama unfold. Essential to that experience is the knowledge that both sides have no other thought but to win.

But it is difficult to contrive such a game or forecast when it will happen. The logic of the bomb is not that John Major will now call all-party talks; it is that he will refuse to negotiate under such duress, and will have the support of Dublin, Washington and almost everyone else in refusing to do so.To explain why the ceasefire ended it is necessary first to review how and why it started. Since the early 1970s, the IRA had waged a fierce campaign to drive the British out, but from the late 1980s republican leaders, headed by Gerry Adams, evolved a more thoughtful approach. Internal debate led them to conclude that the nature of the problem went beyond the old simplicities of believing that “Brits out” was the answer to all Ireland’s problems. They came to recognise that Protestants and Unionists were not merely British puppets, but had concerns, and rights, of their own.They pondered on a world changed by the European Union and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. They looked at the Irish Republic and found a state which, in modernising itself, had abandoned physical-force republicanism in favour of post-nationalist Europeanism.

They looked at Britain itself, and saw a country which looked less and less like a colonial power and more and more as though it would be frankly relieved to be rid of the burden of Northern Ireland.They looked back over all the years of violence, and the tremendous energy and sacrifices they had made. They noted that, while the British government had secretly been in touch with them between 1990 and 1993, the contacts had taken the form of verbal fencing rather than negotiations.And the thought grew that there might be another way. For years, Adams and his associates had challenged those who condemned republican violence to put forward an alternative way of working towards their ends. At first this seemed little more than rhetoric, but as time went on outsiders came to explore whether the republicans might be serious about contemplating a historic change of direction.The first to take the rhetoric seriously was the SDLP leader, John Hume, who as long ago as 1988 led his party into formal talks with Adams and Sinn Fein. Many more contacts followed over the years, the idea growing that the republicans could be weaned from violence.The period from 1992 to 1994 was packed with both violence and political activity: there was a peace process, but on more than one occasion it seemed to have been wrecked by republican or loyalist atrocities. The fact that it survived so many acts of violenceleaves a glimmer of hope that it may yet survive even this dark time.The Downing Street declaration of December 1993, made jointly by the British and Irish governments, amounted to a formal offer to republicans of entry into politics if IRA violence ceased.

There were many ups and downs in the months that followed, but the August 1994 IRA ceasefire seemed the natural culmination of the peace process.It came about through a complex of factors, but a number of key calculations were set out in an IRA document circulated among its members in the summer of 1994. One was the bald statement: “Republicans at this time and on their own do not have the strength to achieve the end goal. The struggle needs to be strengthened; most obviously from other nationalist constituencies led by SDLP, Dublin government and the emerging Irish-American lobby.”Adams had long argued that a military victory was not possible, either for the IRA or the British. The proposition he now advanced was that the leverage lost by abandoning terrorism could be made up by new political partnerships.The August 1994 cessation was followed by a welter of meetings between Sinn Fein and others on both sides of the Atlantic. Hume remained a strong advocate of early all-party talks, while republicans were treated well by wealthy Irish-Americans and the Clinton administration.But other things did not go as they expected. Albert Reynolds, in whom they had placed much store, lost his job as Taoiseach within months of the ceasefire; his successor, John Bruton, has proved much less supportive. The biggest problem came in the spring of 1995, when the British government formulated the pre-condition that some IRA weapons had to be de-commissioned in advance of all-party talks.