Chris Jones - The Secret Life of Twickenham: The Story of Rugby Unions Iconic Fortress, The Players, Staff and Fans

The Story of Rugby Unions Iconic Fortress, the Players, Staff and Fans

By Chris Jones

First published in 2014
by Aurum Press Ltd, 7477 White Lion Street, London N1 9PF
www.aurumpress.co.uk

This eBook edition first published in 2014

Copyright Chris Jones 2014

Chris Jones has asserted his moral right to be identified as the Author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

eBook conversion by Quarto Publishing Group USA

Digital edition: 978-1-78131-385-5

Foreword
By Lawrence Dallaglio, OBE

Chapter One
Why would you build it there?

Chapter Two
The new North Stand rises and a very different Twickenham shape is born

Chapter Three
Harlequins the multi-coloured first tenants

Chapter Four
Travelling to Twickenham Stadium the recurring nightmare

Chapter Five
Harold and John Clark create a family dynasty before it all goes Desso

Chapter Six
Twickenham Stadium and the two World Wars

Chapter Seven
Peter Hain and the mystery of the swastika

Chapter Eight
Dudley Wood and the fifty-seven old farts controversy

Chapter Nine
The changing Twickenham changing rooms

Chapter Ten
A new professional broom, Operation St George and blood on the carpet

Chapter Eleven
Twickenham makes BBC history and Jeremy Clarkson rips up the pitch

Chapter Twelve
Twickenham tickets mines in the dog!

Chapter Thirteen
Swing Low, Erica Roe

Chapter Fourteen
Twickenham by numbers

Chapter Fifteen
The changing face of match day at Twickenham

By Lawrence Dallaglio, OBE

T wickenham has a very special place in my sporting life. I was lucky enough to enjoy considerable success in my favourite stadium with both England and my club London Wasps, and it was always a privilege to walk into the home dressing room and then run out onto a pitch that provided the stage for so many wonderful moments in my career. It is an iconic stadium with a huge history and I like to think that during my time with England we turned it into a fortress. It really did become the second home for Wasps, and because of that it was, and still is, such a very special place.

I first played at Twickenham while a pupil at Kings House School in Richmond and I am very happy to recall that I managed to score on my debut on the pitch in a mini-rugby match. The stadium looked very different to the wonderful bowl that we know today, with the old stands on the north, east and west sides providing the backdrop for my first match and the small South Stand looking rather out of place at one end. I was in the old stands as a fan for the 1991 World Cup final when Australia defeated England, and the stadium was a big part of my formative years because we lived in the area and took every opportunity to make the pilgrimage to HQ. My final game for Wasps was also at Twickenham in 2008, when we defeated our great rivals Leicester to win the Premiership title again, in front of a world-record crowd for a club match of 81,600.

Playing at Twickenham almost always brought the best out of Wasps and we won our two Heineken Cups in the stadium in 2004 and 2007, beating the Toulouse Galacticos and then Leicester Tigers, and we won a total of eleven trophies during my time with the club. It always amazed me that a club like Wasps, with a relatively small fan base, could assemble a whole army of supporters when it was a Twickenham final, and half the stadium would be waving yellow flags for us. It was entirely appropriate that when we celebrated the tenth anniversary of that Heineken Cup win over Toulouse in 2014, we staged the dinner at Twickenham, and it was a memorable evening to mark a special time for the club, its players and coaches. It hasnt been just about playing at Twickenham, because the stadium also provided a training base for those of us who lived locally as we prepared for the 2003 Rugby World Cup that we won in Australia. The Breakfast Club, which included Jason Leonard, Will Greenwood and Joe Worsley, used to meet up with Dave Reddin at 6 a.m. each day and he used to beast us in the indoor gym area next to the home changing room.

After ending my playing career at Twickenham, it was natural that the stadium would provide one of the focal points for my charity cycling event, the Dallaglio Cycle Slam, as I finished both mammoth rides at the stadium in 2010 and more recently in June 2014. The Golden Lion was a welcome sight for me and my fellow riders after covering over 2,500km to raise around 1m for the Dallaglio Foundation (www.dallagliofoundation.com). Twickenham is home from home for me, and I was so honoured when the Twickenham Experience immortalised the work I now do through the Dallaglio Foundation using the inspiration and values of rugby to help young people tackle lifes challenges by having them as a major feature of the museum. This book brings to life so many of those images in the museum and explains how the present Twickenham has evolved into one of the worlds great sporting arenas. I have been privileged to play a small part in a much bigger Twickenham story, one that is at the heart of English rugby.

W hen Harold Clark was asked to become Twickenhams first clerk of works in 1964 he was ready to walk away from the job as the stadium, in his withering verdict, was a tip. Twickenham Stadium, home of English rugby and the Rugby Football Union that governs the sport in that country, has divided opinion ever since the site was chosen in 1907, and many of the problems identified all those years ago remain, headed by the limited transport links (accentuated by recent decisions to have later kick-offs). Clark did eventually agree to take up his new job and set about dragging the stadium into the modern age by sacking the drunken labourers he found asleep under coats in a converted gents toilet that served as his office. Today, Twickenham Stadium is an 82,000 all-seater bowl and lies at the financial heart of the Rugby Football Unions 150m business. In fact, it was planned that Twickenham would have a capacity of 125,000 once the new stands had been built, but the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, when ninety-six Liverpool Football Club fans died, saw plans for terrace areas in the entire lower bowl replaced by seating.

It is thanks to men like Clark that what used to be a loss-making relic of a bygone sporting era has been so remarkably transformed without a single penny of government money. The new Wembley Stadium cost nearly 800m, while the Olympic Stadium in Stratford was erected for around 530m, which makes the total spend to date of 288m by the RFU to create a modern Twickenham Stadium very good business. It didnt look like that in 1907, after a plot of land twelve miles from Piccadilly Circus was chosen to be the home of English rugby when Billy Williams and William Cail convinced the Union to buy a former market garden for just over 5,500. That was also the year Robert Baden-Powell led the first Scout camp on Brownsea Island against the backdrop of a widespread financial panic that saw the stock market fall by 50 per cent. There were runs on banks and trusts, and a number of companies went out of business. Patently, timing was not one of the RFUs strong points.