Mark Chapman: Time for England teams to look beyond London?

The England players were grateful for the support of the fans in the City of Manchester Stadium on Saturday night.

There were plenty of platitudes being dished out in post-match interviews, even some surprise that despite a desperate Rugby Union World Cup campaign, the sporting public had still come out in force to watch the national team. The reality is that they probably didn’t have much choice having bought their tickets for an awful lot of money before the tournament - so to have not turned up would have been self-defeating. It wasn’t just the players praising the crowd either. Several reports I read on the Sunday morning mentioned their enthusiasm, while the 5live team in the ground on the Saturday night, of which I was a part, also noted their positivity. I found it more akin to a crowd at a school swimming gala; plenty of high pitched screams and squeals, a few Mexican waves and a plethora of twee songs. Yes, there were plenty of men on the lash, but the overall feel was a family atmosphere with plenty of kids in the crowd. And that shouldn’t come as a surprise either because for a lot of these children this was their one and only chance to see the national team at their own World Cup. All England’s previous games had been at Twickenham. If they had progressed out of the group, their quarter-final, semi-final and final would all have been at Twickenham or the first two would have been at the Millennium Stadium. Their training camp was in Surrey. Their welcome event to launch their World Cup experience had been at the O2 in South London. So for a World Cup in their own country they had got of their South East bubble just the once. And if they had a progressed in a certain way, they could have ended up playing more games in Wales than north of Watford. Contrast that to New Zealand in the 2011 World Cup. They had played in three different cities by the end of the group stages, Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington. Brazil in the football World Cup of 2014 featured in games in Sao Paolo, Fortaleza, Brazilia and Belo Horizonte. These two historical superpowers of their respective sports are both conscious of the fact that they belong to the country. And belonging to the country ought to involve taking games to the North, East, South and West of that country. England at Euro ’96 played every single match at Wembley. The relationship between the England football fans and the national team felt at its strongest in my lifetime at the start of the millennium under the the reign of Sven Goran Eriksson. With the new Wembley Stadium being developed the team used club grounds, meaning people who lived in Leicester, Ipswich, Leeds, Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester and Southampton all got a chance to see their national team in their own city and without having a nightmare commute to an industrial park in North West London. In the build up to a lot of games there were concerns about players would be received at various grounds because they played for a rival club. How would the Anfield crowd react to David Beckham? Well, strangely enough they went berserk on the Kop when he scored in front of them against Finland because this was about England, not Manchester United and Liverpool. There was a joy and an enthusiasm and a freshness about seeing England in different venues. As soon as Wembley was rebuilt, the joyous road trip ended. The last time the national side played in this country, outside of London was 7th February 2007. It’s not just football and rugby. The recent Ashes series against Australia saw not one Test Match in the north of England. Granted, they did go West to Cardiff and East to Nottingham but not North. Although one person who was quite high up in this decision process did try to argue that Nottingham was northish. I pointed out the fact that Nottingham is in the East Midlands would more than likely suggest it isn’t the North. This is not an anti-South rant by any means, more a rant at those in power who lack the imagination and see pound signs above anything else. In some cases they have a stadium to pay off, in other cases they might find corporate hospitality easier to sell and more lucrative in their London bubble but they are ignoring huge swathes of the country. If you live in Plymouth or Lincoln, Dover or Carlisle are you really going to be able to finish work, get your kids out of school and go and see England play at Wembley on a school night? And that’s before you even take into account the cost. At the risk of sounding like Kevin the Teenager it is just so unfair. https://twitter.com/bet365/status/644452249549320192 Gary Neville recently wondered whether there is now a divide between the clubs in London and the rest of the country when it comes to attracting the best players. Well there is definitely one when it comes to watching our national sides in action. Plenty of countries take their sides out about, Italy, Germany and Spain in football. Australia and South Africa in rugby union. We are constantly told that we are a sports mad country. We fill stadia up and down the land watching a variety of sports. Wouldn’t it be nice if the people who ran our national teams could give the whole country opportunities to see them rather than just a select few?