Big Game 16: Inside Harlequins’ Premiership rugby grand spectacle

“I’ll never forget running out at the Stade de France, and there being can-can girls, knights jousting on horseback and gymnasts doing these amazing flips on the pitch,” said scrum-half Danny Care.

“I was a 21-year-old kid just thinking, what on earth is going on?”

It was 8 December 2008 and Harlequins were part of the cast for Stade Francais’ latest gaudy jaunt to France’s national stadium.

Media magnate Max Guazzini was Stade’s owner and known for his flamboyant marketing of the team. Eye-popping kits, calendars featuring naked players and celebrity visits to the changing room fed the hype.

Staging matches at the Stade de France, and attracting near 80,000 crowds in the process, was another of his ringmaster tricks.

It may have come as a shock to Care, but Harlequins chief executive Mark Evans had been watching for a while.

By the time Quins and Care played in Paris, Evans had already booked out Twickenham for three weeks later and a match against Leicester.

“Stade Francais had been doing it for three years or so at that point,” said Evans.

“Paris is not a big rugby city – it was even less so back then – and I thought if they can get 80,000 people in on a combination of staging an event and pricing which made a large percentage of seats affordable, I was sure London could do the same.”

Not everyone agreed.

Festive sporting crowds weren’t a London phenomenon because people leave the city for Christmas. Some thought Twickenham – eight times the size of the Stoop at the time – was too big a stage.

Those were the theories. Evans’ faith was repaid with a different reality.

“Lots of people said it wouldn’t happen or it would be a disaster, and we were nervous – until it was four weeks out and we had sold 30,000 tickets,” Evans said.

The previous record attendance for a regular-season Premiership fixture was 23,709. By the time kick-off came around, Quins, decked out in pink and blue, had shifted 50,000 tickets – a sellout after the authorities limited attendance because of transport issues.