How sport's other half lives

BY TOBY ROBSON IN MILAN

Plush leather bucket seats form a semi-circle around AC Milan's changing room, each one embroidered with the club's red and black logo.

LCD flat-screen TVs form a 360-degree ring around the ceiling above the players' lavish lockers and it's the same down the hall at rivals Inter Milan's separate changing rooms.

Above them, 80,000 seats tower 60 metres above a football pitch that looks like a green postage stamp under their steep incline.

Even the reserves benches here are decked out, soft black leather aircraft-style reclining chairs for the reserves – heated, of course.

Welcome to San Siro stadium, the venue of the All Blacks' test match against Italy on Sunday.

Not a day has passed since the All Blacks arrived in Milan that the stadium has not been mentioned. And a visit to the hulking concrete beast in the city's west shows why.

A week ago the All Blacks ran on to the impressive, roofed Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. They will discover at today's captain's run that it has nothing on Stadio San Siro.

Private backers of AC Milan had it built in 1925 for just 30,000 fans, but it quickly expanded. In 1956 over 100,000 people crammed in to watch the national football team beat Brazil 3-0.

The capacity has been reduced in recent times due to safety concerns, but for sheer size it is among the biggest in the world and remains the second-largest stadium in Europe, bettered only by the 98,800-seat Camp Nou in Barcelona.

Away fans are seated at the ends, in the third tier, removed from the rest of the crowd by Perspex fences and wires to avoid clashes.

Our stadium tour guide explains that the rivalry between AC Milan and Inter has its roots in class distinctions.

The working class were traditionally Milan fans, while a perception remained that the middle and upper classes backed Inter. These days the social forces are not as great and nor are the crowds, but both sides still average close to 60,000 per game, sharing the ground on alternate weekends.

Sixty million dollars was poured in by the government for the 1990 World Cup and it is clearly not designed for rugby.

The rock-hard astro-turf starts about a metre from the sidelines and the in-goals are only slightly better, with five metres of hastily arranged grass cover.

Only twice before has the oval ball code graced its surface. Italy lost 12-3 to Romania in 1988 in front of just 9000. It has been filled many times for big football matches, including three Uefa Champions League finals, but more recently only when star-studded rivals Juventus make the short trip up the road from Turin.

On Sunday, the Azzuri and the All Blacks will place another brick in rugby's growing prestige in Italy. Hopefully the match can live up to the prestige of its venue.

- © Fairfax NZ News