What counts is how the money is spent
CHRIS HEWETT
THINKING ALLOWED
IT WAS a close-run thing but, after crunching the numbers harder than a caffeine-fuelled psephologist on election night, we can now predict the following with a high degree of confidence: there is more chance of Dan Cole outperforming Simone Biles on the uneven bars than of a badged and blazered rugger chap from some swanky corner of the shires erasing the word “Twickenham” from his vocabulary.
The movers and shakers at the Rugby Football Union can rebrand Twickers in whatever way they like – as they just have, funnily enough – but away from the committee rooms and hospitality boxes, the old cabbage patch will never be known as the “Allianz Stadium” by the masses at the turnstiles. You might as well ask people to speak of Wimbledon as the “Pimms Championship”, or refer to the Old Bailey as the “G4S Central Court of England and Wales”, or swear allegiance to the “Horse and Hound Royal Family”.
Which is not to say the sponsorship deal announced last week was anything other than inevitable. Rugby in England needs money and Allianz, ranked in some listings as the largest insurance company in the world, has oodles of it. And while the RFU has spent most of the professional era banging on about Twickenham being the spiritual home of the game – its holy of holies, its sacred place – even religions have their price. Modern-day America tells us that much.
For every follower of the union code who despairs at the idea of soul-selling for commercial benefit, there is another who has even less liking for sporting penury. What's more, it is perfectly possible and entirely legitimate to hold both thoughts at the same time.
Elsewhere on Planet Rugger, supporters have had this stuff imposed upon them for donkey's years. Pity the poor folk of Durban, who currently get their 15-man fix at Hollywoodbets Kings Park – a stadium that has, at various times in its long history, been known as ABSA Stadium, Mr Price Kings Park Stadium, Growthpoint Kings Park and Jonsson Kings Park. Of course, it used to be known as Kings Park, pure and simple. And guess what? It still is, to everyone who attends matches dressed in something other than a business suit and a corporate lanyard.
The South Africans have almost as much of a penchant for this kind of thing as they have for scrummaging. Ellis Park in Johannesburg hasn't been Ellis Park for a decade and a half. Not officially. Coca-Cola Park? Yes. Emirates Airline Park? Yes. And what do most of us call it to this day? Not by those titles, that's for sure.
There are fixed points of resistance, even now: Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria is still Loftus Versfeld; Stade de France is still Stade de France; Eden Park in Auckland is still Eden Park and, most unusually, the venue can claim to have had a multi-national business named after it, rather than the other way round. But now the Twickenham dam has burst, there is no knowing where the floodwaters will flow.
For all their wealth and influence, the people behind the RFU-Allianz deal can go only so far in forcing their will upon the rest of us. The broadcasters will come under enormous pressure to toe the branding line and will no doubt obey – the only people who feel the need to speak of “BT Murrayfield” or “Mattioli Woods Welford Road” or “Cinch Stadium at Franklin's Gardens” (up you could not make it, except someone did) are television commentators – but most print journalists, what's left of us, will tough it out. It was ever thus.
“The old cabbage patch will always be Twickenham in the eyes of rugby's diehard supporters”
On the positive side of the ledger, there has been the occasional case of a branding deal working for everyone, from the grandees in the boardroom to the man and woman in the street. Remember the Heineken Cup? Of course you do, for the very good reason that in its pomp, it was unforgettable – and might have stayed that way even after the palace coup of 2014, had the new masters of the tournament's captivating universe not piddled on the founding sponsors' French fries. Heineken were the backers from heaven: committed, enthusiastic, innovative and, most importantly, heavily involved in the venture from its inception. Even national newspapers with a strict “no sponsors' names” policy were happy to go with the H-word while flatly refusing to play ball with the lessthan-pithy “Lloyds TSB 6 Nations”. Why? Because the brewing giant helped create the competition, as well as finance it.
Will Allianz find a Heineken-sized place in the hearts of rugby people up and down the land? Probably not. In Twickenham terms they're nothing more than Johnnies Come Loaded, and besides, name recognition for big business is hardly the thing that keeps us awake at night.
What matters is not money in and of itself, but what the RFU does with it. The usual “blather words” were there in the statement announcing the deal – “iconic”, “transformative”, “legacy” – but so too was a commitment to funding the game more generously at every level. If that promise bears fruit, the change of signage won't amount to a hill of beans.
