Opposition feel heat in Cardiff cauldron – Flood
FORMER England star Toby Flood has lifted the lid on what it’s really like to be on the receiving end of the Cardiff cauldron.
Eddie Jones brings his Class of 2019 to the Principality Stadium on Saturday dismissing the Cardiff factor as an irrelevance.
But many England sides down the years have crumbled in the passionate atmosphere created for this oneoff Six Nations fixture.
And Flood has offered a fascinating insight into what it is really like for an English player to deal with the pressures and intensity of this game.
Flood was England outside-half during the ‘James Hook match’ of 2007 which Wales won, the 23-15 defeat to Wales again two years later and played in the record 30-3 humiliation of 2013.
Flood was on the winning side just once in the Welsh capital, the 26-19 triumph in 2011. But despite three losses, he insisted he loved playing in Cardiff because it was “as raw as it can be” and calls the hostility created by the supporters fantastic.
He explained how gesticulations would be made at the England team bus heading to the ground by “baiting” Welsh fans in an attempt to unsettle the players.
“The bus journey in was always fairly eventful in terms of the gestures and gesticulations you got from outside,” Flood said in an interview with The Times.
“You have to come right though the centre of Cardiff and they are trying to unsettle you a little bit.
“Once you get past the baiting fans the stadium is a real deep bowl. It feels how you would imagine the Colosseum to have been.
“When it is a constant barrage of noise you can get lost in it.”
He even claimed the pre-match band would deliberately attempt to disrupt the England warm-up by marching straight through where practice drills were taking place.
“It never went into the Welsh side but you were always having to get people out of the way to do your kicking practice,” said Flood.
“They are making it as awkward as possible and you have to deal with the pageantry and sideshow.
“On occasions, the players would kick balls at the choir and if it hit someone, just shrug our shoulders and said: ‘Well, you’re in our our way’.”
Flood urged Eddie Jones’ charges to feed off the hostile atmosphere during the table-topping Six Nations clash with similarly unbeaten Wales on Saturday week. He says England did that in 2011 when Chris Ashton scored a brace of tries.
Two years on, however, Grand Slam-chasing England pitched up in Cardiff with the title virtually in the bag – and it went badly wrong.
Wales overturned a significant points difference with one of the greatest performances in history to beat the old enemy by a crushing 30-point margin and take the Championship.
Flood says Welsh confidence and joy grew with every point scored by Warren Gatland’s side and that belief in the crowd ‘seeped on to the pitch’.
“The rugby became a sideshow. It was irrelevant for the crowd. They attacked the English with ‘stick your chariot up your arse’ and it became a public hanging,” he said.
“That crowd are fantastic. They are knowledgeable and when you start losing control in a game they sense it.”