Six Nations 2014: Stuart Lancaster"s England car park gambol at Twickenham is ...

“Oh yeah, mister,” says the child. “Put out fires, can it?”

Twickenham has always been a stranger to impertinencies of that kind.

Indeed, the planet hosts no safer and more elegant repository for stationary

vehicles than that in which ticket holders congregate and array their lavish

picnics on trestle tables.

On Saturday, those fortifying themselves with champagne and game pie before England’s
Six

Nations game against Ireland

may be prey to a novelty.

The latest of so many innovations to emerge from the fecund mind of head coach

Stuart Lancaster is

to make his players stroll through the car park and chat with fans en route

to the changing room. Whether or not inspired by reflections of how Sir

Tom Finney fraternised with Preston North End followers as he walked to the

ground, Lancaster believes that this will strengthen the bond between team

and supporters, and through some osmotic process establish Twickers as an

impregnable citadel at the 2015 Rugby

World Cup.

The proof of the pudding (in the West Car Park, probably a delicate lemon

posset washed down with an insouciant Sauterne) will be in next year’s

eating. For now, we must ask ourselves whether the notion of fans mixing

with sporting demigods, and even having the chance to offer them expert

advice, is a fine idea.

Experience leaves me conflicted on this crucial issue. On the one hand, it can

pay tremendous dividends.

Seated next to Andy

Murray one rainy july night in 2012 at Upton Park, before David Haye

and Dereck Chisora’s heavyweight grudge match, I told the Scottish tennis

player of the feeling in my bones that he would win the forthcoming US

Open.

Who can say that, when Novak

Djokovic fought back to two sets all in the final, it was not the

memory of this pep talk that gave him the belief to take the fifth 6-2, and

end the grand slam drought?

Another encounter, at White Hart Lane some 15 years ago tells an altogether

different story.

Moments after the kick-off, a diffident knock on the door of the corporate box

in which I found myself led to an invasion by seven injured and rested Tottenham

Hotspur players for whom, so their de facto leader Colin Calderwood

explained, there was no room in the dugout.

For the next two hours this taciturn bunch devoted their attentions to the

television screen in the search for scores from games on which they had bet.

On balance, I have to side with the Victorian nanny’s dictum that sporting

demigods should be seen and not heard.

Nothing dims the afterglow from a performance as majestic as Chelsea’s

recent Premier

League victory at Manchester

City like hearing Jose Mourinho speaking about it.

One cannot fail to recognise Mourinho’s genius. Nor can one fail to appreciate

how immeasurably improved as a public presence he would be by a permanent

bout of acute laryngitis.

For every Muhammad Ali, whose pre-and post-fight observations were such a riot

of witty insight, there are scores of Pete Samprases, whose brilliance is

undermined by the tedium of their speech.

Being an outstanding prop forward or hooker is one thing, and being a

sparkling talker another. Seldom can the twain be expected to meet.

And so, while acknowledging such exceptions such as the startlingly modest and

charming Murray, the iron rule is this: the only place in which you should

encounter sporting heroes is in the context in which they established their

heroism.

You would not wish to see even the greatest car park attendant in human

history playing at full-back for England.

Why on earth would you want to find a member of the rugby union XV attending

to you in the car park?

Article source: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/mystery-found-rugby-caps-deepens-6141154

Six Nations 2014: Stuart Lancaster"s England car park gambol at Twickenham is ...