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The Manchester City Stadium will stage England’s final Rugby World Cup Pool A game against Uruguay on Saturday, a rare trip away from Twickenham for a home game. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA
The Manchester City Stadium will stage England’s final Rugby World Cup Pool A game against Uruguay on Saturday, a rare trip away from Twickenham for a home game. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA

Why rugby union must try harder to bridge the north-south divide

This article is more than 8 years old
Robert Kitson
England’s World Cup dead rubber will take place in Manchester, but playing regular Tests away from Twickenham is something the RFU should consider

As England’s shellshocked World Cup squad prepare to head north for the most posthumous of dead rubbers against Uruguay, their Twickenham-based overlords might care to ponder the following questions. How many players in their starting XV against Australia last Saturday actually come from the north of England? Or will be playing their club rugby north of Leicester this season? Ahem. The respective answers are two and none.

At the very least this should be raising concerns at the Rugby Football Union; at worst it is a scandal. Yes, there were four bona fide northerners on the bench – George Ford, Kieran Brookes, Sam Burgess and Richard Wigglesworth – but all four have moved to southern clubs to better themselves. Carry Them Home now sounds increasingly hollow on every level – home for their most marketable players means the south-east, the Midlands or the more desirable parts of Bath.

Who are kids from Yorkshire or Durham or Lancashire or Cheshire or Northumberland meant to idolise? Owen Farrell, perhaps, but he plays for Saracens and has been based in the south since his early teens. Burgess belongs to Bath – for the moment at any rate. Stockton-on-Tees’s finest, Geoff Parling, has just emigrated to Exeter. Sale’s Danny Cipriani – a Londoner at heart – cannot shoulder the entire burden.

On England’s final day at Pennyhill Park before heading to Manchester for their only game outside HQ at this World Cup when they face Uruguay on Saturday, England’s head coach Stuart Lancaster acknowledged the significance of Saturday night’s match.

“The importance of the game in Manchester for the national team is huge. We had a good chat yesterday and we talked about a few things. The first was the responsibility to put in a good performance for the country. In the context of this game, the north of England in particular.

“I know from my own personal experiences of living in Cumbria and Leeds, how much rugby is played in the north of England and how much grass roots rugby have longed for England to come to the north”

Even those of us not reared on mushy whippets, flat-cap pie and all those other specialist north country foodstuffs unavailable south of Crewe should feel indignant. How come that a region so obsessed with sport is producing a relative thimble-full of top union talent? Might it be because England travel north to play rugby union Test matches about as often as the Household Cavalry visits Halifax?

Thanks to a valuable new book, The Complete Rugby Union Compendium by Keith Young (Arena Sport, £12.99), the precise scale of this neglect is simple to check. Apart from a low-key summer Test against Argentina in 2009, the last time it happened was in 1998, when England played two World Cup qualifiers in Huddersfield, against Italy and the Netherlands. The All Blacks also played a Test against England at Old Trafford, when the atmosphere was outstanding.

Other than those you have to go back to 1923 to find the last time England hosted a home nation anywhere other than Twickenham – they beat Ireland 23-5 at Welford Road – and to 1897 for their previous Test outing in Manchester, when they defeated Scotland 12-3.

Compare and contrast with New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, who take their games nationwide and think nothing of it. The RFU has long argued against doing likewise on financial grounds; they insist a full house at Twickenham ultimately nourishes the northern grassroots more effectively than renting Old Trafford or the Etihad. Ultimately it boils down to how keen it is to expand the game’s popularity, something rugby union often seems loth to do if it means deviating from the path of least resistance.

Even Lancaster talks about the difficulties of getting training time in the north, let alone a game. “It is a shame we didn’t have more opportunities to take the team, maybe not necessarily a game, but to train in different parts of the country,” he said. “That becomes very difficult and I won’t bore you with the complexities of the Six Nations and the EPS agreement and everything that goes with it but it does become hard to do that.”

Surely we have reached the point where this up-country nettle has to be grasped? By all accounts, the World Cup games at Leeds and Newcastle have been heart-warming occasions; a record 34,000 people visited the fan zone in Newcastle in 24 hours, more than any other venue. Admittedly next year’s World Under-20 Championship will be held in Manchester, which is a start. But it will take place in June, coinciding with the Super League season and the European Championship football. It seems suspiciously like lip service.

No wonder the region’s star athletes turn to rugby league or football. So why not respond by inviting Japan or Georgia to play a full Test in the autumn of 2017 and schedule it at Elland Road or St James’ Park? Commit to playing a Six Nations home game against Italy – or Scotland – at Old Trafford. If it costs the RFU a few quid in terms of annual profit, tough. It is time for its debenture holders to think of those less fortunate than themselves.

Such an initiative would also boost the club game locally and assist those who rarely attend Twickenham games on the grounds of cost and/or travel hell. One of the most striking features of the Guardian’s Chasing the Chariot countrywide odyssey this year was how infrequently rugby lovers from the north bothered to make the pilgrimage to the place still referred to by some as HQ.

We cannot revert to the days of Otley staging World Cup games – what a great day that was when Italy and the USA visited in 1991 – but totally ignoring the potential northern powerhouse is absurdly dated. If the RFU schedules a few more games away from Twickenham – and not just the odd fag-end fixture involving Uruguay – it will reap benefits far beyond the balance sheet.

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