England finally answer call to arms against Wales on difficult day

There is no official smoking area at Twickenham. The organisers are very clear on this point. Smoking and vaping is strictly prohibited in all areas of the ground, enforced by hundreds of stern-looking signs with a handy reminder on the back of your ticket. Unofficially, of course, everyone knows that the smokers congregate near Gates D and F by the green perimeter fence, and no lackey in an orange bib is going to offer a word of demurral. And so it is that at half-time in this taut, gripping game the corners of the ground are thick with the fug of cigarettes, as hundreds of fans merrily puff themselves a little closer to death.

But then, Twickenham is that sort of place: a world governed by tacit conventions and innumerable contradictions. A place built by old money and yet in thrall to the new. A place that likes to think of itself as the home of rugby but which in reality represents a single narrow sliver of it. A place where sport is the draw but socialising is the real heart of its appeal. An 82,000-capacity arena with the feel of a little English village.

That duality was evident a few minutes before kick-off, when – in common with many sporting venues around the country this weekend – a message flashed up on the big screen announcing that both teams “strongly condemned” the war in Ukraine. The players linked arms and there was warm applause around the ground: a sober atmosphere for sobering times, and an entirely understandable gesture by the Rugby Football Union in the current climate.

Of course, there was a good deal less fanfare for another event held at Twickenham just a few weeks ago, when the stadium hosted the International Armoured Vehicles Conference, one of the leading global arms fairs. Military