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Behind the scenes at England's World Cup HQ
From golf simulators and plasma screen TVs to IP phones and armour-plated cables

By Andy McCue

Published: Thursday 15 June 2006

With the England football team gearing up for its crucial second group match against Trinidad & Tobago - following the solid, if unspectacular, three points from the opener against Paraguay - there is one man key to preparations. And we're not talking Sven or David Beckham.

That man is The Football Association (FA) IT support manager Ian Dimmock, who is known around the Baden-Baden team hotel by his nickname 'Charles Platt' - conjured up by those wacky England players because his surname is Dimmock (as in big-chested female gardener Charlie Dimmock) and Platt because he bears a striking resemblance to former Aston Villa and England midfielder David Platt.

Dimmock is tasked with keeping FA staff remotely connected at the team's mountain hotel HQ, running the infrastructure behind the high-tech media centre there and, perhaps more importantly, keeping the players entertained with all the latest games and gadgets.

This has to rank top of the list of dream jobs for any football-following IT workers, although Dimmock, via a live videoconference link from Baden-Baden to the FA's Soho headquarters, tries - somewhat unconvincingly - to dispel that image.

He says: "It can be very hard work, not that I expect to get any sympathy."

And he's even more unlikely to get any when he reveals he has to be kitted out with the same gear as the England team - including made-to-measure Armani suit and sunglasses, Armani luggage and a pile of Umbro sports gear.

In reality it's usually a long working day for Dimmock out in Germany, sometimes getting up at 6:00 and not getting back to bed until almost 3:00 the next morning - but he does get to go to the England matches.

At the hotel a host of the latest high-tech entertainment technologies have been installed to occupy the England players during the lengthy downtime between matches.

This includes a fully equipped players' arcade room with an indoor golf simulator where you strike the ball against a screen and can play on a choice of 36 courses - England winger Joe Cole is the best at this, apparently.

There is also a four-way championship manager-style football game, a six-lane car racing game, two motorbike racing games, Mario Kart multiplayer with the camera that superimposes the player's face on the drivers on screen and a Sopranos pinball machine.

If they get bored of that The FA have put plasma screen TVs in each of the players' rooms while every squad member also gets access to a Sony Vaio laptop for watching DVDs and surfing the net, and a T-Mobile sponsored Samsung D800 phone engraved with the England crest and their individual squad number - and pre-loaded with a video clip of Geoff Hurst scoring in the 1966 World Cup final for inspiration.

Dimmock says some of the younger England players are quite tech-savvy but he's still constantly in demand to fix an iPod problem or sort out a laptop glitch, while security is always a top priority.

He says: "We have to be very careful about viruses, especially on the players' laptops. We try and give them some pointers on how to manage their data and back it up.

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