Wasps stadium ruck could end up being the capital's gain

John Inverdale
16.10.09

London Stansted, London Luton, London Gatwick: what do these three airports have in common? Correct. They're nowhere near London. One is half way to the Norfolk Broads, the others half way to Northampton and the sea respectively. Imagine being a first-time arrival in this country. This is London?

And yet it's this dilemma of wanting to latch on to being part of our capital city, while still really being nowhere near it, that confronts London Wasps at they continue their battle with Wycombe councillors over a planned new stadium site for both the rugby club and Wycombe Wanderers football club.

It's been reported in the past few days that Wasps have given the council a December deadline to approve their proposals, or they will consider moving out of the area. Not a moment too soon will be the response of most supporters, who've had enough of the lamentable access to Adams Park, which must be a major reason for the poor attendances the club have been experiencing this season.

And yet, even if the two sides do reach an agreement and allow a new purpose-built arena with fantastic amenities for the people of Buckinghamshire, what actual benefit is that to London and its rugby fans?

Wasps will presumably remain 'London Wasps' even though it's more than an hour from the heart of the city, while Saracens continue to play at Watford, Harlequins at Twickenham, and London Irish halfway to Bristol.

England is the richest rugby-playing nation on earth and yet its capital city doesn't have a single top-flight club within its midst. The days of Wasps playing at Loftus Road are but fading memories now and yet despite the problems associated with catapulting an alien sport into an initially underwhelmed area, and the fact that the pitch's dimensions were too small, attendances were respectable at a time when gates at Premiership games were barely 50 per cent of what they are a decade on. They'd be a whole lot larger now.

The protracted planning debate at Adams Park could turn out to be a blessing for both the club and the sport, because if Wycombe Council prevaricates any longer, let's hope Wasps' owner Steve Hayes has the courage (and the funds) to strike out for the big city and actually move London Wasps to London.

The Olympic Stadium post-2012 could be one option. They could share with the Bees at Griffin Park but even that is too suburban. Never mind Brentford, what about Battersea? Or Crystal Palace. Or Dulwich. We need a top rugby club in London that feels like Del Boy and Rodney, not Margot and Jerry.

Netball fails to hit target after revamp

Force-feeding is never the best way to encourage children to change their eating-habits. If they don't like liver, they don't like liver, and hovering over them waiting for the plate to be cleared isn't going to change things.

So last Sunday, I was force-fed several hours of netball as a hoops-obsessed friend sat me down in front of the television to watch the Co-operative World Series in Manchester in a bid to turn me from a netball sceptic into someone who appreciated the tactics and movement of a fantastically vibrant game'.

You have to admire the people who run netball. Their re-invention of the sport, with cool clothing, re-branding of the teams and getting a
high-profile Sky TV contract, shows a vision that many other governing bodies could learn from. The event featured a number of rule variations, making it netball's 20-20, and was imaginatively presented for both the viewer at home and at the venue.

But, and it's a big but, fundamentally it's too easy to score in netball, which makes it repetitious and ultimately unfulfilling. We score, they score, and no matter how much juggling with the rules you do, in the end it's all the same. Compare that with the Heineken Cup duel between London Irish and Leinster two days earlier, when not a single try was scored, and yet the drama was unrelenting. Some of the best games of football can be goalless draws.

So after a gruelling three-hour initiation, the sceptic remained unconvinced. Make the hoops higher. Or smaller. Or higher and smaller. And let people score from anywhere on the court. Most important of all, show me a spectacle where the final score can be 1-0. Then you might have an extra convert.

Reason to be cheerful . . .

SaiLen Tudu is an Indian from an impoverished part of Calcutta who plays rugby. That puts him in a pretty select group. A group of one, in fact, because he's a member of the Gloucester Academy and has genuine hopes of going on to play in the Guinness Premiership. On Wednesday night, he played alongside a galaxy of internationals and British Lions in a fund-raising match at Esher for the children's charity, touraid. He scored two tries, scorching in from 70 yards on one occasion, before departing battered after being blitzed by Abi Ekoku, formerly of the Bradford Bulls. In the bar after the game, amid the jeans and the trainers and the suits, he wore his traditional Indian costume, a sparkling vision of light blue, happy to talk to anyone and everyone about his extraordinary journey from the sub-continent to college in the west country. He'd been swamped on the final whistle as hordes of young kids wanted his autograph as much as they wanted that of England World Cup winner Mike Catt. It would be overstating the case to say that he is Sachin Tendulkar with an oval ball but, on and off the field, he charmed everyone in leafy Surrey a couple of nights ago.