Have you ever tried explaining rugby to a wizard? That is what I, an innocent muggle, thought I had been tasked with one day in Gloucester, as I attended Kingsholm with Fred and George Weasley, the twin brothers of Harry Potter’s best pal, Ron.
The explanation for Gryffindor’s finest was figured out, comparing rugby with Quidditch. Admittedly the former has no equivalent for the 150-point achievement of catching the golden snitch but, with the way rugby’s governing body enjoys tinkering with the laws, nothing should be ruled out of future trials.
If you’re a bit lost, the Harry Potter references will (for the most part) end there; because the actors who play the Weasley twins are no strangers to Kingsholm.
James and Oliver Phelps rose to fame in the early 2000s when they bunked off school to audition for the part of the red-head twins in Warner Bros’ big-screen adaptation of Rowling’s novels. The Phelps brothers, born 13 minutes apart in Sutton Coldfield, were just 15 when they were first cast as Fred and George Weasley in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, reprising their roles in the following seven films of the series.
Nowadays, the 38-year-olds are best known as the presenters of Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking, and boast nearly five million followers on Instagram.
They also happen to be huge fans of Gloucester and, on the cricket field, Warwickshire. However, that is where the sporting similarities end: for football, James is a long-suffering Birmingham City fan while Oliver is an Aston Villa season-ticket holder.
But it is a rugby matchday which attracts our attention on a crisp January Saturday, with Leicester in town for the final match before the Premiership’s Six Nations hiatus. James has driven to the match from Dorset - where he lives with his wife and dog - while Oliver has left his wife and two children at home in Sutton Coldfield.
We will be recreating the matchday routine on which the twins used to embark with their grandfather, Eric, who kick-started the Gloucester love affair.
The meeting point is Ye Olde Restaurant & Fish Shoppe on Hare Lane, a stone’s throw from Kingsholm. Upon seeing the twins for the first time, realising that they had dyed their hair for the Harry Potter films, my planned greeting - “ginger hair and a hand-me-down Gloucester shirt? You must be a Weasley” - is ruined, although the pair do thankfully don club jerseys.
Up the winding staircase through the Tudor beams we go, to the table James has reserved. “Mind your head,” he turns and says.
“Otherwise I might be ‘nearly headless’,” I think.
“It all started because our dad’s side of the family came from Gloucester,” James tells Telegraph Sport. “Eric used to come and watch Gloucester all the time. His mate, Bill Hook, played for Gloucester and England.”
Oliver adds: “The first two films were filmed at Gloucester Cathedral [where Eric was christened] and that’s when the obsession started.”
“We started coming more and more often and we’d drive ourselves down once we were old enough,” James says. “We got on well with that really good team at the time. James Simpson-Daniel I still think is one of the best ever players - and it turned out he was a big Potter fan!
Oli: “Yeah I sent him a message once on Twitter saying ‘good game’ or something and he sent a DM back saying ‘no way, come down to my testimonial match as my guest’. The first time we went, we had another ‘Mercier’ [Mercer], Ludovic, playing for us. Phil Vickery might have been in his final year, too. It was surreal, going into the changing rooms. Seeing the other side of it, what the players go through.
“We played with Matt Banahan on a golf day and I asked him what it was like playing for Gloucester and he said: “Brilliant because the fans love you but they’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong. As long as you’re putting the effort in... it’s a very authentic fanbase.”
It becomes clear early on that the Phelps brothers are no hobbyists, no showmen; they do not attend Kingsholm with the goal of cosying up to the great and good of English rugby. Cut them and they bleed cherry and white, with their knowledge as deep as their passion. They have travelled to Limerick for European jaunts, they remember cult heroes Mercier and Terry Fanolua, and they were at both Gloucester’s losing Premiership finals, in 2003 and 2007.
The pair eschew hospitality tickets in favour of the authentic Shed experience. As regulars in their youth, they also know that we do not have lots of time to dwell on lunch: a late arrival in the Shed and you risk having to make do with a poor view, on the tryline. Still, there is just time to discuss their favourite current players.
“Santi Carreras,” Oliver says. “Although I have been disturbed by the [recent Bath] news. And Christian Wade. Going further back, Sinbad [Simpson-Daniel], Ben Morgan. Freddie Burns is one of the guys we met through Gloucester. It was great to see him doing the business for Leicester in the Premiership final.”
James adds: “Rory Lawson - he’s taken a lot of money off me at golf, too.”
“And Tinds [Mike Tindall],” says Oli. “We play in his golf day every year and we meet up with him at Cheltenham, too. A good guy. It’s not about winning; although usually Austin Healey does, off some bandit handicap. And you can quote me on that! He gets dog’s abuse for it but it’s like water off a duck’s back to him I think.”
The brothers have loved doing their bit to raise funds for the Matt Hampson Foundation, with James lauding how rugby looks after its own.
He goes on: “We went to a normal comprehensive where rugby was not a thing until, maybe, Year 9 - and even then it was just a term. But we knew about it from staying at nan and grandad’s, because back then it was more readily available on TV. That’s what got me into it. Football is always the first sport growing up but rugby, going to matches especially, is not as territorial as football can be. It is more welcoming. Even in the Shed, you can be standing next to a Leicester fan, but you give and take in a good way. And the players are far more approachable. They don’t forget where they’ve come from and you can chat to them after matches.
“I remember playing in school for a term and then we were cast in Potter and we weren’t allowed to play contact sport anymore! We weren’t allowed contractually. But it became the sport I watch more than any other, the only one I watch with my wife. Admittedly, Birmingham City aren’t helping.”
Oliver interjects, cheekily: “I was in Monaco on Tuesday [with Villa] and Birmingham were at... Wrexham?”
“For me, as a sport in general, it’s more exciting than almost every other,” James adds, swiftly changing the subject. “There’s always something good that happens - at some point. But we were at the Hong Kong Sevens last year and I cannot recommend that enough to anyone. A must. Not just the party atmosphere but the sport itself. It’s non-stop.”
Oliver now coaches one of his daughters’ teams, Spartans in Staffordshire. So far, his players are not aware of his profile. The same, however, cannot be said of the opposition.
“It was by chance [that I got involved],” Oliver says. “They needed some help and I thought that if I was there anyway then I might as well. The kids don’t recognise me at the moment. They just think I’m one of the dads. But the opposition the other day did recognise me because they’d been watching the baking show on Prime. That was funny for them. I had to ask them to keep it quiet because my team didn’t know.”
Across to Kingsholm we stroll, grabbing a Guinness in the fan village on arrival. The duo have no desire to shove themselves into the limelight and there is a diffidence to them, but given their distinctive looks, sometimes the spotlight cannot help but find them. I overhear two passing fans, asking each other whether “it is really them”. One approaches the brothers for a photograph and asks rhetorically whether it was them before answering himself: “Definitely.” It turns out that he was as much of a fan of the recent baking show as the films themselves.
We take our place in the Shed but with one Phelps in a wooly hat and the other in sunglasses, the attention is not so acute. Although a particularly keen official club photographer manages to snap the pair on entry to the ground, with the picture managing to swiftly find its way onto the Gloucester Instagram page. In the Shed, we spot the couple in front reading the social-media post, completely oblivious that the subjects of it are standing directly behind them. The next day, I ask the club where that post ranks on their all-time list, and by Sunday it was already the second most-viewed of all time, behind only Louis Rees-Zammit’s departure to the NFL. Weeks on, it may well have overtaken it; a pointed reminder of the profound power of the influencer.
The brothers might have stuck out like sore thumbs on entry, but in the Shed their assimilation with the Gloucester fans is seamless. They are right at home.
They offer rapturous applause to Ed Slater, the former Leicester and Gloucester second row diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2022, and cheer the name of each player when it is announced. During the match, they join in for the chants of “Santi Carreras” to the tune of Seven Nation Army and they cheer maniacally as Gloucester score three tries in nine minutes. They abstain from joining in the chorus of “eeyore” - although I can tell they are tempted. I am certain that briefly one of the brothers gives Mike Brown a bit of gyp too, but that is de rigueur in the Shed.
“When we came to our first ever game here, we had bright ginger hair as it was in the middle of filming,” Oliver says. “James also had a red hat on and someone shouted to him to take it off and called him a beacon. It’s unique to Kingsholm.
“I remember Terry Fanolua’s final game. And I remember Stuart Barnes always got digs from the Shed - as he would - and I remember the commentary box was above it. He was walking across the pitch to it and getting heckled, and then he put on this big afro wig like Fanolua and then everyone started cheering. It was great.
“I remember a story about the Falcon mascot from Newcastle walking too close to the Shed. Someone grabbed him and then a minute later you just saw a man appear in his underwear... the costume was lost to the Shed.”
“Nothing to do with us, honestly officer,” James says, jokingly. The Weasleys are known as a pair of pranksters and, ostensibly, the japing has rubbed off somewhat on the Phelps duo.
With Gloucester having bludgeoned Leicester - the cherry and whites catching the snitch - there is time for one last butterbeer before parting ways. Curiously, I never see the brothers’ cars. Maybe they came on broomsticks, after all.
