Sixty minutes until kick-off in the third Test and it\u2019s getting busy at Harpenden RFC. Derek Wallace, the clubhouse manager, hardly has time for a handshake. He\u2019s in the kitchen cooking slices of white pudding he\u2019s brought over from County Mayo especially. <\/p>\n
Wallace is a dab hand at the grill, and Harpenden\u2019s full English is maybe the only one in the country that comes with a side of dauphinoise potatoes. He\u2019s not sure how many fans they\u2019ll have in. It was well over a hundred for the first Test, and twice as many for the second. He\u2019s worried it\u2019ll be more than they\u2019ve catered for the third. Anyhow, the lad behind the bar is packed off to the shops for more baked beans.<\/p>\n
Outside, the younger kids are all out playing on the big artificial pitch, which is the club\u2019s pride and joy. \u201cCome down here most mornings in winter,\u201d Wallace says, \u201cand Owen Farrell\u2019s out there with his dog, practising his goal kicking.\u201d<\/p>\n
No one pays him any mind. Farrell lives nearby and played through the age grades at Harpenden during his teenage years. The first thing you see when you walk in the door is a big picture of him lifting the Tom Richards Cup after the Lions\u2019 third Test against Australia in 2013, and one of the shirts he wore in that series is up on the wall.<\/p>\n
Harpenden is a commuter town, 35 minutes from London by train. It\u2019s all ancient trees, trimmed hedgerows and little brick cottages with wonky wooden beams. Almost everyone\u2019s an out-of-towner. In the middle of all the coming and going, the foundations of the last decade of English rugby were laid down here.<\/p>\n
Farrell was the club\u2019s first Lion and Maro Itoje, just a few years below him, was their second. Last week, the Lions\u2019 midweek and Test match captains were both Harpenden RFC men. \u201cNot bad for a wee club,\u201d says Stu Mitchell, a Scot who used to coach here. Farrell and Itoje were both students at St George\u2019s, the local state boarding school, along with a couple of the club\u2019s other internationals, George Ford and Jack Singleton.<\/p>\n
Harpenden RFC alumni Owen Farrell (left) and Maro Itoje after the Lions\u2019 defeat in the third Test against the Wallabies. Photograph: David Rogers\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
For decades Harpenden was a small club, best known for hosting the annual national pub rugby sevens competition. They had never had an international player, although Viv Jenkins, who played for Wales, and toured with the Lions in 1938, was the club\u2019s president for a time after he settled in the town during his second life as a sports journalist.<\/p>\n
Things started to change in the professional era when a lot of Saracens players and staff started to move into the area. The Vunipolas are still nearby and often come down to use the ground with their children, and Charlie Hodgson and Nick Lloyd are both on the coaching staff.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The under-16s team Ford and Farrell played in has gone down in local legend. \u201cThey annihilated everyone,\u201d says Robert Jones, another of the club\u2019s old coaches. Not that Farrell and Ford, whose fathers were both working for Saracens at the time, needed much help.<\/p>\n Itoje was different. He had never really played much when he first turned up. Rugby is compulsory at St George\u2019s, but basketball was his sport. \u201cTruth is he was hopeless at first because he couldn\u2019t get his head around not being able to pass the ball forwards.\u201d But Mitchell saw him hit one ruck and quickly realised he needed to persuade him to join the club.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a blindside flanker myself,\u201d he says, \u201cand my favourite player was Richard Hill. He used to reach into a bucket of snakes and come up with the ball. I saw Maro do that same thing in a school game and I thought: \u2018Well, there\u2019s only one other player I\u2019ve ever seen do that before\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Itoje was big, they used to make him get off the bus first if he saw the opposition were watching, but he was shy with it, softly spoken and impeccably polite. He used to turn up to the family BBQs with extra chicken. When Mitchell told him he didn\u2019t need to bring his own food, Itoje explained it was for after he had eaten.<\/p>\n The bar is full despite the early hour at Harpenden Rugby Club as they watch the final test of the Lions\u2019 tour of Australia. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The Test match in Sydney is drifting. Itoje has gone off with a head injury and the Lions are missing his leadership. Farrell\u2019s on in the midfield, it\u2019s a tight and hot-tempered match in terrible weather. You\u2019d think it would be made for him.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople always ask me if I ever sent Owen off,\u201d says Paul Nolan, who has been refereeing at the club since the 80s and remembers how the Farrell family used to watch on the sidelines. \u201cAnd the answer\u2019s no, because I was too scared of his mum.\u201d<\/p>\n Nolan can\u2019t abide swearing on the pitch. \u201cPeople say: \u2018Why would an Irishman worry about bad language?\u2019 Well, it\u2019s a Sunday morning and this is my church.\u201d Up on the screen, Farrell is cursing a blue streak at one of the Aussies. Nolan chuckles. \u201cI was down at Saracens watching him not long ago, and his dad turned to me and said: \u2018He\u2019s not changed, has he?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The artificial pitch was a reward from the RFU for the work the club did in bringing them through, which annoyed their local rivals no end. Long before the end of the Test, the kids are back out on it, more interested in winning their five-a-side than watching the Lions lose. I\u2019m told they have hundreds of them down here on Sundays in season, all dreaming of wearing that famous red jersey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sixty minutes until kick-off in the third Test and it\u2019s getting busy at Harpenden RFC. Derek Wallace, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-40597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}