World Cup: Twickenham mystery grows

A couple of weeks ago it was confirmed that the World Cup Final next year - the most important game in women's rugby worldwide - would not take place at Twickenham but would instead be at The Stoop - the nearby home of Harlequins RFC.

The only explanation for this that I have heard is that Twickenham now demands a minimum guaranteed number of ticket sales for any game to be staged in the stadium, and that the organisers of the Women's World Cup could not meet these demands.

Quite a lot of (on the face of it) quite minor domestic games do take place at Twickenham - Army v Navy, Oxford v Cambridge University, etc. - but these rather less important fixtures do sell quite a lot of tickets, so the apparent discrimination against women's rugby was explicable in hard economic terms.

Or maybe not. Last weekend Hertfordshire's men's team played at Twickenham in the final of the County Championship Shield - a final that is held at Twickenham every year. I've just been sent a set of photos from the game and I invite you all to click here and count the crowd (its a slideshow so you will need to wait about five seconds for it to begin)...

Then ask yourself this question. Do you reckon that the final of the Women's World Cup next year will pull a bigger crowd than Hertfordshire v Cheshire?

Given this, I suspect many people will be fascinated to learn the real reason why the World Cup Final is not being played at Twickenham. After all it cannot be that it is because its a women's world cup, can it. There must be some other reason...???