Now Kate’s a rugby WAG!
AN EXUBERANT 80,000 crowd, a global TV audience, fireworks, a parade of sporting heroes and a spoof film starring a member of the Royal Family… Sound familiar? There were so many happy echoes of London 2012 last night as the capital kicked off the world’s third biggest sporting event – the Rugby World Cup – in the country which invented this sport. But anyone expecting Twickenham Stadium to lay on a reprise of Danny Boyle’s Olympic curtain-raiser, with its £27million homage to the industrial revolution and the NHS, was out of luck.
This was a short, unapologetic celebration of Victorian values and the sporting ethos of Tom Brown’s Schooldays – on a tiny fraction of the budget. Besides, this crowd had actually turned up to see a proper rugby match – last night’s England v Fiji opening fixture. The result was 35-11 to England.
Instead of Sir Kenneth Branagh and Sir Paul McCartney, we were entertained by the band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, the choir of Rugby School and Twickenham’s resident mezzo soprano, Laura Wright.
Following the example of the Queen, who wowed the world by apparently leaping from a chopper with James Bond to open the Olympics, it fell to Prince Harry to do the honours last night. Like his grandmother, he had a cameo role in the opening video, playing a 19th century groundsman at Rugby School, along with ex-England star Jonny Wilkinson.
The scene, in which the duo are caught by surprise as the game of rugby is born in 1823, was filmed at Rugby School back in June, long before Prince Harry had started growing his new beard. Last night, sporting the result on the royal chin, the 31-yearold prince welcomed the world in his capacity as Honorary President of England 2015.
‘I can think of no other sport where the success of the team is shouldered so equally by everyone,’ he told a crowd including the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Prime Minister and assorted celebs including Simon Cowell and rugby-loving TV cook Mary Berry.
Reminiscing about great World Cup moments, not least Wilkinson’s Cupwinning drop kick in 2003 (cue: huge cheers), the prince went on: ‘Rugby has changed dramatically in my lifetime. But it remains a game founded on a code of values; values which are as important today, both on and off the field of play, as they have ever been.
‘It’s up to every one of us to raise the roof on each match in this unforgettable journey. The players have earned it, the nations deserve it and the fans expect it. We’re ready… Game on!’ After much brisk business in the Twickenham beer tents, it certainly was.
It was perhaps just as well that one name on the guest list had failed to show. Jeremy Corbyn had been invited in his capacity as Leader of the Opposition but pleaded a prior constituency engagement. Whether or not there had been a genuine clash with an anti-austerity bean feast in Islington we were not to know.
But a man uncomfortable with singing the national anthem in St Paul’s Cathedral would not have enjoyed listening to 80,000 revellers bellowing God Save The Queen and I Vow To Thee My Country, not to mention all the usual ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ stuff and thunderous applause for £33,000-a-year Rugby School.
THE revered Twickenham pitch was dominated by a monstrous rugby ball surrounded by giant chunks of grass on hydraulic lifts. Shades of that rural idyll which opened the London 2012 show – minus the dancing yokels and livestock. By way of a warm-up, the crowd had been roused to shrieking point with an orchestrated karaoke singalong of Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline. That had them dancing from the cheap seats to the VIP box.
The ceremony proper opened with a film recreating that famous day when Rugby schoolboy William Webb Ellis ‘took the ball in his arms and ran with it’. Though an actor played the head boy, it fell to a genuine Rugby schoolboy, 14-year-old Edward Anthony, to play the part of Webb Ellis.
A shocked 19th century crowd looked on as Webb Ellis went charging off clutching the ball, heading out of the school past the two baffled groundsmen. ‘ What’s he doing?’ asked Jonny Wilkinson. ‘ Don’t worry, Jonny. It’ll never catch on,’ replied Prince Harry, to genuine roars of laughter across the stadium – particularly in the Royal Box.
Theirs were not the only familiar faces, either. Others enjoying a cameo role included ex-England skipper Billy Beaumont and former coach Sir Clive Woodward. From there, the video gave way to reality back in the stadium and