The Secret Life of Twickenham by Chris Jones

Author:Chris Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aurum
Published: 2014-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The changing Twickenham changing rooms

Brian Moore, according to legend and information supplied to visitors on guided trips around the stadium in the mid-1990s, was responsible for a dark stain on the England dressing room wall after losing the 1991 Rugby World Cup final to Australia. ‘Not true,’ said Moore, who won sixty-four caps as a combative and erudite hooker and is now a successful author and member of the media. ‘That is a complete fabrication.’ Access to the England dressing room has always been restricted, which used to give the room an air of mystery and allowed myths like Moore’s stain to be created. Other sports, most notably the National Football League and Major League Baseball in North America, allow television cameras and the media to swarm into the changing rooms after matches, and there is a more relaxed attitude in European rugby. Those sporting bodies recognise they are operating in a market place and the players are a commodity that need to be made available to the fans and those who act as a conduit between the two.

That has never been the RFU’s stance; even in this professional era, access to the players is carefully controlled and the changing rooms are still off limits. For decades the England changing room and the one for the away team constituted the only areas where players could put on their kit in the stadium. Since the development of the West Stand in the middle of the 1990s there have been six changing rooms and enhanced facilities for the match officials, who used to operate out of one small referee’s room. Twickenham’s earliest changing rooms featured a bench for players to sit on running along the walls and hooks where clothes could be hung up. In 1931 the RFU installed the now famous cast-iron baths produced by Allied Ironfounders for players to use in both the home and away areas. There were half a dozen in each changing room and these were half-filled with cold water and then the hot was added just before the final whistle by the changing-room attendant.

Twickenham Stadium was not alone in offering rudimentary facilities for the players, as for much of the amateur era the attitude of the governing bodies who ran the sport and picked the national teams was that a player was lucky to have the opportunity to represent his country and didn’t need to be pampered. Players, before the era of sponsored kit, would be asked to bring their own boots, shorts and socks and also had to supply their own training jersey – even for international squad sessions.

Bill Beaumont, the RFU chairman, led England out to Grand Slam glory in 1980 from Twickenham changing rooms that would look exactly the same when Will Carling sprayed champagne to toast England’s 1991 Slam triumph. Beaumont said, ‘The first time I came to Twickenham was to see England versus Ireland when Tony O’Reilly was recalled to the wing for Ireland in 1970. I never thought I

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