ENGLAND ARE PREPARED to take a financial hit by staging home Tests away from their money-spinning 82,000 capacity Twickenham headquarters in a bid to boost the national popularity of rugby union.
Grounds in northern cities such as Manchester or Newcastle could be used for at least some of England’s warm-up games ahead of next year’s World Cup in Japan.
But Steve Brown, the chief executive of England’s governing Rugby Football Union, said they had no plan as yet to take showpiece home games in the Six Nations away from Twickenham in southwest London.
Since rugby union turned professional in 1995, England have played only five home games at anywhere other than ‘fortress’ Twickenham, with the most recent a resounding win over minnows Uruguay at the City of Manchester Stadium that rounded off a miserable first-round exit at the 2015 World Cup.
Although England got a good reception in Manchester, Brown’s predecessor, Ian Ritchie, ruled out taking further England home games on the road because of the sheer millions of pounds generated by every international at Twickenham.
But Brown believes there will be a long-term benefit to England taking matches out of London.
“The game needs to go to a different part of the country. There is no question it needs be more accessible — England needs to be more accessible full stop,” he said.
“There may well be some options that we look at with the World Cup warm-ups. There’s a good chance we’ll start to see us playing in different parts of the country.”
Brown added: “There are some real heartlands in the north-east and the north-west. There’s competition with football and rugby league at the community level, but there’s great history there too.”
And Brown insisted it was important these games were not rare fixtures.
“The other thing is to make it a regular feature,” he said. “We don’t want it to just be a one-off and that’s the challenge. An autumn Test could be an option.
“It doesn’t have to be a football stadium but we had 55,000 for Uruguay in the World Cup. That’s the scale that we’ll be looking at.
“If we were to take a call to reduce our income, that’s less money to put back into the game, but it’s a balancing act because the game would be an investment to increase interest and participation.”
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Great save by Kelleher near the end. Comfortable afternoon for him
Top player.
Super performance and result albeit against a woeful Watford. Unlikely to be a worse performance by any PL team this season. Salah is unbelievable and his goal was magical, give him the contract his performances and goals deserve. Great to see Firmino scoring. Though Kelleher had nothing to do he kept his concentration to make a very good save at the end. Gonna be a tight title race. Surprised Salah and Mane played the 90 minutes, Minamino could have done with game time especially against that Watford team.
Mo Salah is WOW!!! a pleasure to watch him…..Firmino not bad either : )
Time to sack Ranieri…….
@John S: dilly ding dilly dong
@Heckler davies: dilly ding, dilly gone
Class win and 3 more handy points. We will be hard to stop This season as we put last seasons blip behind us
Danny Rose will sleep tonight. Great performance against an albeit poor side!!
Give Mo all the money. Almost 0% chance of being able to replace him
Lewandowski and Salah are the best players in the world on current form.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a PL side as bad as that Watford side today….if they lost 10-0 it wouldn’t have been a surprise! Woeful…
@Ottomaaan: you forgot to mention that they were up against a solid side with a rampant front three, there, I fixed it for you…. :)
@Gordon Larney: no need to fix anything. That was the worst performance I’ve ever seen from a PL side, dreadful stuff and Liverpool could have put 10 past them.
@Ottomaaan: have to agree. I was at the game and never seen such a bad performance from a PL team.
Salah in great form. But how long canhe hold that form? He has 20-25 goals in him a season, but he’s up and down. If he held this form, he’d be close to 40 goals?
Bigger tests against Athletico and United on the way.
@Finn Faulkner: did you like your own comment…
@Finn Faulkner: how long can he do that. ? He has been doing it for the last 4 seasons. 104 goals in 166 games in the Premier league but you think he should score more. Okay so
@Finn Faulkner: you’re gonna need bigger bait on that hook ….
@WESHALLNOTBEMOVED: But by that metric 4 seasons at 40 goals would be 160 goals. He hasn t done that. But my point is that if he can keep that killer hat on his head for a prolonged period, and with our squad almost injury free, he could break records for us. I’m HOPING he keeps this lethal form indefinitely. He still can’t be put in the Messi/Ronaldo category until he starts being seriously clinical. I’d love to see him win the Balloon d’Or this year (or the next)
@len len: No, but seeing as you need likes, here, have mine. Have a lovely day.
@WESHALLNOTBEMOVED: you included his Chelsea stats there, it’s 102 in 153 for Liverpool
@Shane Roche: It’s still an amazing number of goals per season, but I think he can go even further, he needs to keep this current form. Biggest tests are against Athletico and then United.
That salah. Goal was pure roy of the rovers.. Pure art.. He must be a great dancer..
As good as Liverpool are, and they are really good. This in my opinion is all about Klopp.