Big Game 16: Inside Harlequins’ Premiership rugby grand spectacle
“I’ll never forget running at the Stade de France where there were cancan girls, knights on horseback and gymnasts doing amazing flips on the field,” scrum-half Danny Care ) said.
“I was just a 21-year-old kid, just thinking, what the hell is going on?”
It was December 8, 2008, and Harlequins was among the cast of the Stade de France’s latest glamorous trip to France’s national stadium.
Media mogul Max Guazzini is the owner of Stadler and is known for his flashy marketing of the team. Eye-popping jerseys, a calendar of naked players and celebrity visits to the dressing room all fueled the hype.
Hosting matches at the Stade de France and attracting nearly 80,000 spectators in the process was another one of his circus-making skills.
It may come as a shock to Care, but Harlequins chief executive Mark Evans has been watching for some time.
While Quins and Kyle play in Paris, Evans is already booked for Twickenham three weeks later and against Leicester City.
“The Stade de France had been doing this for about three years at the time,” Evans said.
“Paris is not a big rugby town – not even then – and I thought if they could get 80,000 people by putting on an event and making most of the seats affordable, I’m sure London could do the same.”
Not everyone agrees.
Festive sports crowds are not a London phenomenon as people leave the city for Christmas. Some thought Twickenham – when the stage was eight times the size of the Stoop – was too big.
These are the theories. Evans’ faith was rewarded with a different reality.
“A lot of people said it wasn’t going to happen, or it would be a disaster, and we were nervous – until four weeks later we had sold 30,000 tickets,” Evans said.
The previous Premier League regular season attendance record was 23,709. Quins, dressed in pink and blue, had already moved 50,000 tickets by the time the game kicked off – a sell-out after authorities limited attendance due to traffic problems.
