English sport must look outwards to see the bigger picture
The atmosphere for England’s Euro 2020 qualifier at Southampton on Tuesday crackled like a sparking fuse box. St Mary’s, intimate in a way Wembley can never be, was a pulsing house of fun.
It helped that there was a crazy goal-fest being played out and 2,000 Kosovo fans bent on making their nation’s first game against England a noisy red-letter day, but a run-of-themill qualifying match was upgraded to the status of an occasion.
Well over an hour after the end of the game, plenty of England supporters were still hanging around for a glimpse of their heroes. For the locals, this was the circus coming to town.
Four days beforehand, at the other end of the country, St James’ Park in Newcastle had delivered a party-night backdrop for the England rugby union team’s pre-World Cup send-off.
In contrast to the football, there was little to cheer from a humdrum game against Italy, but the 50,000 crowd was desperate regardless to lend its support and have a good time in the process. Had that match been staged at Twickenham, it would have been more like a mausoleum.
And what of Old Trafford on Sunday? It was more like a bear pit than a cricket ground as England fought, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to stay alive in the fourth Test.
Manchester ripped off its collective shirt and howled, loud and long, against the dying of the Ashes light.
Three different matches, three different sports, three different geographical locations hundreds of miles apart, but with a common sense of a special event. Moving the caravan around has always been part of cricket scene, but taking international sport around the country clearly works for England whatever the sport. It should happen more often. The FA seem to be grasping this. They staged England
games at Leeds and Leicester last year after going on the road to Manchester and Sunderland in 2016.
There is talk now of another friendly in the north in May. It is a momentum that needs to be maintained. There is a financial hit in terms of lost capacity and ground hire in taking games away from Wembley – but money isn’t everything.
England are the national team. Taking them out of the capital and into the regions fosters that identity and inspires those who would not otherwise have the chance to see them. Wembley will always be Wembley but St Mary’s was the latest to prove there are plenty of other vibrant venues that can be a great fit for England. The old joke about the man walking into a Southampton pub and asking the landlord if he could recommend a good port, only to receive the reply “Dover”, turned out to be just that.
There is life outside the capital. London may be one of the world’s great cities but its gravitational pull on all sectors of society is unhealthy and, in sport, where the talent and support is dispersed far and wide, it makes even less sense. Gareth Southgate, as a Londoner who lives in Yorkshire, sees this and is a supporter of an expansionist England fixture list. For the England rugby team, it is back to Twickenham following the World Cup. After their North-east venture, the RFU have apparently no plans to take more Tests on the road.
More fool them. Look inwards and a sport sees only its navel. Look outwards and it can see the big picture.