Blame ‘Wally with the Brolly’ Steve McClaren for Rishi Sunak’s soaking
When Rishi Sunak stepped out in front of his lectern in order to announce a snap election on Wednesday, it was raining so hard Downing Street resembled the interior of the main stand at Old Trafford whenever precipitation hits. There were cascades of water everywhere.
Even as he walked from the front door of No 10, it was bucketing it down. Within moments of starting his speech, the Prime Minister’s hair was sodden, there were puddles forming on the shoulders of his £3,500 Henry Herbert suit jacket, his trademark slim-fit trousers were in danger of shrinking ever further up his calves.
If you were wondering, as he addressed the nation, rain trickling off his fringe, why on earth he didn’t bring an umbrella – or at least had instructed an aide to hold one over his head as he spoke – there was a simple reason: it was all Steve McClaren’s fault.
Sunak is a football fan – or so he professes to be whenever Southampton are doing well. So he will have remembered what happened at Wembley in November 2007. That night England needed to avoid defeat against Croatia in order to qualify for the Euros the following June. And like Wednesday, the skies had opened. The pitch, already churned up by an NFL game the previous week, quickly became a quagmire. Within half an hour, Croatia had seized on English errors in the mud to take a two-goal lead. As he stood on the touchline, watching qualification squelch from his grasp, then England manager McClaren cut a forlorn figure as he sheltered under a huge golf umbrella.
Alongside him, the Croatia manager Slaven Bilic preferred to protect himself with a woolly hat and looked immediately more dynamic. Bilic was tearing up and down, constantly bellowing instruction even as McClaren seemed to disappear under his official red and blue brolly, complete with its three lions crest.
Thanks to some tactical switches McClaren delivered at half-time, England recovered the two-goal deficit, and had they found a winner, or even just held on for a draw, McClaren’s preferred method of remaining dry would barely have been noticed. But another defensive calamity allowed Croatia to score a late winner, and as a result England failed to qualify. The next morning, McClaren was called to the FA’s office to have his contract terminated with immediate effect. There was not a chance of him clinging on, not after his bosses had read the morning’s newspapers. The headlines could not have been more humiliating. On the back page of the Daily Mail was a picture of the soon-to-be-fired England boss standing under his umbrella.
“Great leaders inspire their men to glory,” the headline read. “Steve McClaren will be remembered as...”
And there, in 36-point bold type were the words that would thereafter forever be associated with him
“... A Wally With A Brolly.”
It was a line that has haunted McClaren ever since. The Wally With The Brolly became his nickname. A superb coach, the man whose tactical innovation helped Manchester United win the Treble in 1999, became reduced to a comedy figure because of his choice of protective wet weather gear.
And the unintended consequence of his action is that ever since those in public life with an image to protect prefer a thorough soaking to the very thought of association with a similarly damning headline. Certainly Sunak, more than aware of his already precarious wider perception, could not risk such a possibility. And had anyone so much as attempted to hand him a brolly as he left No 10 to make his announcement, his strategy gurus would have snatched it from his grasp. They did not want any repetition of that Wally with a Brolly line.
Nobody uses an umbrella on the touchline anymore. Indeed, as he watched from the bench at Old Trafford the other day when United took on Arsenal in what appeared to be the Mancunian monsoon, the last thing McClaren, these days the United No 2, would have offered his boss Erik ten Hag, being thoroughly soaked in the technical area, was the use of his brolly.
On Saturday, as the United team he helps to coach take on Manchester City in the FA Cup final, McClaren will return to the scene of his humiliation. You can be sure that even if, in recognition of an all-Manchester final, the weather turns Mancunian, the last thing McClaren will do is pop into the England Merchandise Store at Wembley. Here official umbrellas, embossed with the Three Lions crest, are available at a bargain £15. Oddly, they are not advertised with an endorsement from Steve McClaren.
