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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

While the entertainment set-up might sound a little extravagant to most people, Dimmock says it helps keep the players happy. "The boys do get bored. They can't just go down into the village. We try and do as much to keep them occupied and it helps keep their spirit up," he said.

The FA's IT team started organising the logistics back in December, and Dimmock and the set-up team flew out to Baden-Baden on 22 May, two weeks before Sven and the squad arrived.

There are six SDSL circuits at the hotel, which is 1,000 metres up a mountain. A VPN connection back to The FA's servers in London allows the admin team to log on and check their emails.

Dimmock says: "How we got the technology to the place I don't really know."

The FA management and travelling staff, such as match scouts, all have the latest BlackBerrys but Cisco IP phones are used at the Baden-Baden hotel to avoid racking up a massive international calls bill.

Dimmock says: "The main concern is the admin team. As long as the admin team is fine everything runs like clockwork."

The FA also has a massive media centre at the England team HQ, providing tech facilities for 250 journalists and broadcasters at each press conference. Initially a 2MB SDSL circuit feeding into a router and two wireless access points was fixed up but the photographers swamped this by using it instead of their 3G data cards to send photos back to their publications.

But Dimmock said that has now been resolved after Deutsche Telekom helped them to deploy a second SDSL circuit, taking the capacity up to 4MB.

To stop the press putting all their microphones on the table at press conferences, The FA has set up a 45-way sound distribution unit that broadcasters can plug directly into and take a feed off, and put in broadcast-quality lighting.

Energy issues at the media centre, which uses 30 air conditioning units, meant The FA had to take a power feed directly from the city's main grid using an armour-plated cable directly to the hotel.

Back to team affairs, Sven and his coaching staff have a host of technology at their disposal, including a product called Sportscode which allows the coaching staff to analyse footage and tactics from videos of games.

All of this will take just two to three days to dismantle once England come home, which Dimmock hopes won't be before the World Cup Final on 9 July in Berlin.

"We have got a good chance," he says.