SIDELINE CUT:The fear English fans inflicted on people from opposition teams is disappearing, and in South Africa they have been treated like any other crowd

HAS ENGLISH football grown up? Here in Cape Town they began gathering in the bars and stadiums around the Waterfront from lunchtime, draping their flags across the wooden railings of the cafes. Home places were stitched onto the Cross of St George.

They came from Addlesworth, from Stoke, from Portsmouth, Hastings and Doncaster. In the sunshine a few peeled off the regulation team shirts to reveal the Gothic font of nation and symbolic lions inked into their backs. They sang loudly and swamped the cheap lager.

But something was missing. The menace.

From the beginning of this World Cup there has been something different about the profile of England’s travelling army. On the day before the opening ceremony, a local news channel played on loop an interview with two young England fans just arrived in Johannesburg who were taking the brand new Guatrain in from the airport. They praised the rail system and South Africa in general. They were regular-edition public schoolboys, more readily associated with Six Nations afternoons in Twickenham than with the yeomanry who traditionally travel the world to follow England’s doomed football adventures.

Except now, the stereotype of the England football fan – the suede-head bootboys in Fred Perry polo shirts and Oxford jackets – is in the minority. Families follow England. Couples follow England.

In between singing the old chant – “Enger-land Enger-land, Enger-land” – a bunch of lads from Birmingham sat discussing the merits of Jan Koller for the Czech Republic and Peter Crouch for England.

Algerian fans gathered around them, some wearing traditional Muslim garb and waving their flags as they passed by in minibuses. The most hostile response they provoked was a round of vaudeville booing.

Every so often, the veterans of England’s World Cup yesterdays might wander down the street, wearing the flag as a cloak and looking like they would easily blend into to an episode of Britain’s Toughest Pubs. In their 50s, they almost certainly had war tales of those years when to be an England football fan was to sign up to a kind of international infamy, when host cities would fear the worst once those white jerseys appeared on the boulevards.

Whatever the failures of English football, the rehabilitation of the game from its state in the 1980s and 1990s, when the many episodes of barbarism and lunacy perpetrated by English men in the name of football club and country seemed to point to a malaise at the heart of a society, has been a sweeping success. From the War Cabinet set up in the days after the Luton-Millwall riots of 1985 to the identity cards to the gradual modernisation and humanisation of the football stadiums across England, the room and appetite for violence has gradually diminished. In this decade, incidents of trouble caused by England fans at major tournaments has steadily decreased, with preventative arrests in Stuttgart causing the only blight at the last World Cup.

You only have to watch Shane Meadows splendid This is England or read Among the Thugs, Bill Buford’s involved study of running with the Inter-City Jibbers of Manchester and getting caught up in the National Front, to recall the energy and power behind the snarling face of the England supporter.

Even Buford admitted the adrenaline rush and power and notoriety that went with using the squares and main streets of placid European cities was as powerful as any hallucinogen. With England failing economically and imperially, football hooliganism, those gangs with the Dickensian names and the vicious intent, were at least something to belong to.

The reasons membership has fallen away are manifold. Maybe it is because of the governmental determination to wipe out hooliganism in the wake of twin disgraces of Heysel and Hillsborough. Maybe the sweeping wealth of the last decade gave the erstwhile hooligans new pursuits. Perhaps it was just a generational thing.

It is seven o’clock now in Cape Town and Green Point stadium, with its glorious panorama, is already filled with England fans. The old-timers who remember the barricades and riot police that greeted their every visit must be scattered among the nouveau crowd.

You can’t help thinking if some in their number think this new civilised way is vanilla in comparison to the way things used to be.

But one thing is clear. The fear English fans inflicted on people from opposition teams is disappearing, and in South Africa they have been treated like any other crowd.

England has been looking forward to this World Cup campaign entertaining greater expectations than they have done in years. Regardless of the flat performance in their opening game, the uneven beginning to this tournament will give them heart.

Gerrard (born 1980), Rooney (b 1985), Lampard (b 1978), Heskey (b 1978) and Cole (b 1980) are all children of the years when ultra-violence and hate raged through English football. They have risen to distinguish themselves from the vast cast of talented nearly-kids who did not quite make it and enjoy a level of prosperity beyond the wildest dreams of the players who entertained the terrace mobs.

And whether it is wilful delusion or not, they are the generation of Englishmen regarded as having a realistic chance of reuniting England’s football culture with its lone glory of 1966.

But major tests now lie ahead. Last night against Algeria should have provided the golden generation with an easy chance to flaunt their skills and reputation.

An hour before kick-off on a fine winter night in Cape Town and the stadium was draped in the Cross of St George. But even in the aftermath of a hugely disappointing draw, it is hard to imagine these English fans rampaging through the streets of iKapa tonight. Whether the princes of England’s football camp can rediscover their form to escape the group and conquer the world will be seen in coming weeks.

But it could be their loyal cavalry have left the marauding ways behind them. Maybe they have learned at last. Them was rotten days.