Matt Lovell in conversation with John Plummer
T
his doesn’t sound like a particu- larly difficult task until you consider the logistics of ensuring
that 30 big blokes have the right meals at the right times every day while moving from hotel to hotel in a foreign country for a period of several weeks. Everything has to be planned well in
advance so that players who are hungry for success are not left plain hungry immediately after a hard training session or match. “It’s a big challenge,” says Matt, 40, who has been the England team’s sports nutritionist since 2002. “It’s easy to get the food right when you are at base camp back home but when you are at the mercy of hotel kitchen staff it’s a lot more difficult.” While Matt doesn’t want to keep the
likes of Lewis Moody and manager Martin Johnson waiting for their meals, there is one group of people above all others that he wants to remain friends with until England’s campaign is over— the hotel chefs who are preparing the squad’s food. “We have to contact the hotels months
138 MUSCLE&FITNESS
in advance to go through the menus and try to build up good relationships with the people who work there,” says Matt. “You don’t want to get on the wrong side of a chef!” Fortunately it is a task with which he is familiar. He worked with the England squad at the last two World Cups—in Australia in 2003, when they won, and in France in 2007, when they unexpect- edly reached the final. This year England were due to play their first match against Argentina in Dunedin on September 10th. After that they have two more group games in the same city against Georgia and Romania in the following fortnight before flying to Auckland for their final group match against Scotland on October 1st. If they progress they will stay in Auckland as long as they remain in the tournament, which ends on October 23rd so they could be on the road for almost two months—that is a lot of meals to arrange for one person, let alone 30. The value of men like Matt has
increased in recent years as the impor- tance of nutrition has become more
appreciated within rugby. “It is where you can make the most difference in terms of fitness and body composition,” he says. Matt initially got involved with the national team partly by chance. In his final year studying nutrition, his tutor was working in a Harley Street clinic in London that had just started working with a few members of the England side. Matt got a job at the clinic when he
graduated so he immediately gained experience of working with international players. When the clinic closed two years later he was recruited on a full-time basis by the Rugby Football Union. These days he doesn’t just help rugby
players—he works with individual sportsmen and women from a wide range of sports, including boxing and triathlon, as well as with various clubs, including Leicester Tigers and London Irish rugby union teams and Tottenham Hotspur FC. Matt is also keen to spread the word about healthy eating to the general public. His message is that it isn’t difficult to prepare simple, nutritious meals and he has recently written a
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