“Pssst!” The security staff at Wimbledon don’t do a lot of talking. The job of guarding Centre Court seems to be only a little less serious than standing sentry on Whitehall. But this guard, standing to attention outside the media centre in his blue peaked cap and freshly pressed jacket, has something to say to his colleague three feet away. “Pssst!” he whispers from out the side of his mouth. “Rashford’s starting.” His colleague shifted his eyes right while keeping his head straight ahead. “Rashford? Not Gordon?”
Wimbledon is about the one corner of England that isn’t showing the game. You’re not even in easy reach of a screen. The All England Club’s chief executive Sally Bolton said at the beginning of the week that they wouldn’t be showing football on any of the hundreds of TVs around the grounds, never mind the giant ones on the hill and in the South Village. She didn’t really need to explain it. Asking Wimbledon whether it will show the match has become a tradition of its own in years when there’s a football tournament on.
You, him, her, them and just about everyone else might have been watching England go down 2-1 to Croatia in the World Cup semi-finals on 11 June 2018, round here we were watching Kevin Anderson beat Roger Federer in the quarters. This year, it was Barbora Krejcikova versus Mirra Andreeva on Centre Court, and Felix Auger-Aliassime versus Dino Prizmic on No 1 Court, or Jessica Pegula against Sara Sorribes Tormo on No 2. It is actually a good time for anyone who wants to get on to the show courts. The club puts the returns up for sale whenever anyone leaves for the day, and a glut became available around about four o’clock. Can’t think why.
Even then there were plenty of empty seats left on Centre Court, and in some of those that were taken, people were following the football through a discreet earpiece or even a second screen. Tim Henman even said he’d have it on in the commentary booth. “Clearly,” Bolton said, “if people have got their phones, then we’re not going to prevent people from watching the football.” Unless you were supposed to be working. I saw one hapless steward get a smack on the back from a boss who caught him walking through a crowd with his head down in his mobile phone watching the pre-game as he came off shift.
He must have been new here, because all the old hands know exactly where to watch along. The media room is a good one, because the TVs here can be switched over and there’s usually one or two or three nameless sports journalists who have turned over. It used to be that we could tug one of them around to face out on to the concourse outside Centre Court so that anyone passing could stop to watch a moment, but this year the All England Club have replaced the windows – now they’re frosted to stop anyone from peeking in because they’re worried about the health and safety risk.
So most settled for trying to watch it on their phones, and there was a sudden rush of people signing up for the wifi when they realised that the phone reception was overloaded in the minutes before kick-off. While you’d never want to stereotype, it has to be said there were a conspicuous number of young men facing the wrong way on the Hill while their partners followed the women’s tennis. “Oh fuck! You are shitting me!” someone cried out when England went one-nil down in the seventh minute.
I’m not sure he noticed the hard stare he got from the lady sitting next to him, or whether he would have cared if he did.
The players have long since got used to it. When Novak Djokovic’s third-round match against Alexei Popyrin here clashed with England’s Euro 2024 penalty shootout against Switzerland, they had to break the game while the fans cheered for Trent Alexander-Arnold’s winning kick. Djokovic spent the time miming an imaginary spot-kick.
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“You can sense there’s a buzz going on,” Djokovic said. “People are kind of simultaneously looking at your match and also following their national team. It’s normal. It’s the football fever right now in these four to six weeks. We are also part of it. I like football. I follow everything that is going on. Obviously it’s nicer when you’re by the TV than when you’re playing, not everyone is focused on your match. But that’s OK. That’s what it is.”
Wimbledon is a £500m championship, one of the largest annual sports events on the planet, but there’s nothing like a World Cup to remind you where you sit in the pecking order of English sporting obsessions.
