The old wooden stand at Blackheath RFC’s Rectory Field is gone but the memory of it, as being London’s version of Gloucester’s infamous “Shed” remains. It wasn’t a place you’d take your mother.
Watching rugby at Blackheath usually entailed standing on the touchline, which was only separated from the pitch by a waist high rail, but when the cold wind blew and the rain came down, fans would migrate, en masse , to the Old Stand, as it was known, to take shelter from the elements. As useful as it was as at keeping the rain off your head though, for some reason, being enclosed in it did something else to the crowd. The vocal support for the team increased, the language became riper, the atmosphere more intense.
In the years before World War II, when Blackheath regularly hosted international matches and the wooden stand crowd were in their pomp, it was a truly intimidating prospect for visiting fans from Scotland, Wales, Ireland or France.
So, why remember it now? Well, a friend mentioned recently that the new home of Saracens Rugby in North London is not really any better than their previously unloved ground share with Watford Football Club at Vicarage Road. The "Fezheads" played their home matches at Elton John’s cold, ugly, concrete-cancer riddled bowl for more than ten years. It is as soulless a venue as you could imagine and nobody associated with Saracens was sorry to leave it.
Their shiny new Allianz Park is a state of the art, multi-million pound rugby venue. It has a natural / artificial mix pitch - the same as that at Twickenham - which provides a marvellous playing surface, and smart phone apps are available so fans can order food and drink for quick collection. It is even planned that they will be able to show action replays on demand. Each seat is to have a mini TV screen similar to the ‘pixels’ pioneered at the London Olympic stadium in 2012.
But what my friend wanted to know was that great sporting imponderable: Does playing there give their team “The Edge”? That feeling of being a place that opponents dread to come to.
Making visiting players feel uncomfortable is not a bad thing. Not, I should add, that Saracens shouldn’t extend their customary hospitality to visitors before and after the game, but when the opposing players run out onto the pitch, it's fair game to make them wish they were anywhere but where they are.
The Principality Stadium (formerly the Millenium Stadium) in Cardiff may be a seething, hostile cauldron to Englishmen, but it clearly holds no worries to Southern hemisphere teams, evidenced by the time when Sonny Bill Williams, running out for the All Blacks, said “How good is this?” Not the words of a man being intimidated by his surroundings.
Contrast this with the daunting feeling opponents got in Carisbrooke, New Zealand, that stadium the Kiwis called “The House of Pain.” Where, not only did the freezing conditions make opponents feel they really were on the edge of the Antarctic, but the fans softened them up with ferocious hostility – and all this happened before the All Blacks laid a finger on them. Certainly, a trip to Carisbrooke was never a good day out for visiting players.
Twickenham isn’t as claustrophobic as it used to be when the old East and West stands seemed to lean out over the pitch, and the noise thundered down as if from the very heavens themselves, and while the Stade de France may have been built in a less attractive corner of Paris, it doesn’t have half the atmosphere of the old Parc des Princes, which only needed the Dax Band to strike up and Les Bleus would be lifted to such a level of rugby artistry that opponents were not only run ragged, but were often totally wiped out by Gallic flair.
Sadly, that lovely old homestead of Irish rugby at Lansdowne Road has been redeveloped to death. True, all that shiny glass and steel has a certain clean efficiency about it, but let’s be honest, the place is now an ugly monstrosity. The old Lansdowne Road may have been a crumbling pile of concrete and iron that sent a shower of rust down onto everybody’s head whenever trains went past (which they did – frequently), but it held the beating heart of the Irish people and visiting players knew they were taking on not just the 15 players on the pitch, but the whole of Ireland. Team and fans were as one. Brilliant..!!
Murrayfield in Edinburgh is a lovely place to visit and has an atmosphere second to none when full. Unfortunately, it is only ever full at Six Nations time. At other times, you could almost expect to see tumbleweeds roll across the pitch as the wind howls around the sparsely populated stands.
Of course, fans at all venues would love to keep their atmosphere and consider their own home stadium to be a fortress, but the bottom line is the bottom line and I suppose rugby should be grateful that the increasing popularity of the game requires bigger and more modern stadiums. But they come at a price that cannot always be measured in pounds or euros. Sometimes there is a cost in terms of history and fan culture and all the other esoteric factors that go to create an aura of invincibility for the home team.
In my opinion, clubs must find a way to modernise their stadiums whilst maintaining the unique elements that make that place what it is. Not an easy trick, but I wouldn't want to see those special things that make going to a rugby match so special, disappear.
We will be going back to London to visit my family at Easter and I might just be tempted to go to watch a game at my spiritual home of rugby at Blackheath. The old wooden stand isn’t there anymore, but I intend to shout all the louder for the team. Play up, The Club..!! Come on, you Heathens..!!
You never know, it may just give us the edge.
Feb 18, 2016 @ 16:07:15
