Imagine spending your life savings to go and watch your team play abroad, and then losing in record time.
That is the reality thousands of England fans faced this winter. Many of them had not even landed in Australia when Scott Boland nicked off Josh Tongue to seal an unassailable 3-0 lead in the series.
There was at least a silver lining for those flying out to spend Christmas and New Year in Australia with victory in Melbourne – although the three days without cricket would have stung.
But spare a thought for those who have booked the full 56-night, five-Test experience – whose dream of watching England win back the Ashes expired less than halfway through.
Most have spent at least £15,000 to do so, but one couple, the biggest spenders on the official tour with the Barmy Army, have an individual bill of more than £30,000 each on the trip.
Sitting among them, you realise that the England flag – recently so divisive back home – is not only a unifying factor but an equalising one too. There’s a pilot for British Airways, a plastic surgeon, a builder, a painter-decorator, a binman; they all sit alongside each other at breakfast, at the cricket, at the bar, united by their once-in-a-lifetime trip.
Not far away is Simon Finch – “Finchy” inevitably – whom every England fan will recognise but may not know. He is the Barmy Army trumpeter, having taken over from “Billy the Trumpet” six years ago. It was a change of pace from some of his previous freelance gigs.
A huge thank you to everyone who’s backed us through 2025 – singing, travelling, supporting and flying the flag wherever the cricket took us. You guys are what make this community so special. Bring on 2026. pic.twitter.com/kXjFiImRt2
— England's Barmy Army (@TheBarmyArmy) December 31, 2025“I did Liam Gallagher’s first solo tour. He’s cool and they were a nice bunch. And I headlined Glastonbury with Florence and the Machine. That was good,” he says, with deafening understatement.
He admits this role is far less musically challenging, but as a lifelong cricket fan, he too is living his very best life.
He adds: “The best thing about it is on tours, meeting so many fantastic people that I would never normally meet, in everyday life.
“I talk to lawyers, doctors, binmen, entrepreneurs, backpackers. We all have so much mutual respect, because we’re all just part of this big tribe, which is the love of English cricket.”
For all Finchy’s talent, not everyone wants his stylings in their ear all day at the cricket, so you can deliberately book a “non-trumpet“ seat a bit further away from him, just one of the hundreds of considerations that go into dealing with the pressure of delivering the dream holiday.
‘Finchy’ serenades the Barmy Army at Adelaide (Photo: Getty)“You actually feel a real sense of responsibility to deliver an exceptional experience that is far beyond just having nice flight, nice hotel, good tickets,” explains Chris Millard, managing director of the Barmy Army.
“It’s not a holiday for people, it’s a bucket list. It’s their life savings. It’s a retirement present, it’s an anniversary, it’s a honeymoon.
“An Ashes tour and a tour with the Barmy Army always means a little bit more.”
He cannot of course control the cricket, even though he grew up with and remains best friends with Joe Root. (“I haven’t paid for a piece of cricket equipment since I was 13!”) Millard co-owns the Barmy Army Limited, which is really a travel company with a difference, representing a loose group of fans who banded together in the mid-1990s.
He has done the job since before Covid and yet is only just celebrating his 31st birthday – it falls during the tour – making him younger than many of the team his customers are spending the winter watching.
Root’s father Matthew also owns a significant share of the Barmy Army but the association between the team and their supporters is more than just transactional.
“The players have got so much respect for the Barmy Army,” adds Millard. It’s notable that Root is by no means the only player who turns to applaud the Army on each morning of a Test match after their traditional rendition of Jerusalem.
Joe Root applauds the Barmy Army (Photo: PA)“It’s not just because we’re here in our thousands singing songs. It’s because actually there’s 100 people in Bangladesh when there’s no one else there, and there’s only two or three decent restaurants or facilities where Westerners can go and have a good time.
“And usually you spend time with the players. On the smaller tours is where you build the relationships with the players that stand the test of time and the players.”
But the Ashes tour is The Big One for fans. One I met has been saving £100 a month for 20 years to go to Australia for the cricket. Another has left his wife at home with their two sons for nearly two months, including Christmas. So when, after just two days of cricket, England had lost the first Test match, there was a danger of a Barmy Army mutiny.
Fortunately, there are many worse places to spend a few unexpected free days. Perth is most people’s second destination in Australia, after the better known east coast sights of Sydney and Melbourne, but is no less glamorous for it.
The mining industry has kept this city well-heeled in terms of gourmet restaurants and fancy cocktail bars. The local wine too is less famous than its inter-state rivals but no less quaffable, and the Margaret River region with its Mediterranean climate and abundance of homegrown vegetables feels like Italy much of the time.
Even with no cricket, places like Rottnest offered the Barmy Army plenty to do in the meantime (Photo: James Gray)It is there that many of the Barmy Army fled to after the Perth debacle, hoping to escape the horror of the result for a few days. Others jumped on coaches for hastily-arranged day trips to Rottnest, the idyllic bike-first holiday island home of the famous quokka that is just a 25-minute ferry out from the mainland, or head to the fashionable suburb of Freemantle (“Freo” to the locals) for beers in a relaxed but classy setting.
While the seasoned travel pros in the operations team deal with the 3,000 bored Barmies who have no cricket to watch, Millard is trying to pretend he isn’t panicking while fixing with his biggest problem: the few tons of bucket hats and Barmy Army shirts that they would usually sell on days three, four and five. Instead, he is having to find a way to ship it across Australia to Brisbane, just over two thousand miles, at short notice. He finds a way though, and smiling.
Through 5-0 defeats, rained-off ODIs and Covid pandemics, England’s loyal Barmies always do.
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