Both Shields are real. They are made of oak, they are heavy, and they go into rugby grounds.
For years they only existed as an idea and a spreadsheet. Now there are two actual objects, and you can put your hands on either of them.
These are not museum pieces and I am never going to treat them like museum pieces
There are no white gloves. There is no roped off plinth. Nobody is going to tell you not to touch it because it is precious. I want your filthy dirty hands all over it.
At a ground I carry it round and get it into people's hands. Fans, kids, players, whoever is there. I hand out stickers to everybody I meet so they have got something to keep, and I have come home with friendship bracelets that girls have given me in Brighton and in Bristol. One of them went to my daughter. Another one an older bloke gave to my son while we were stood talking.
These are the people's Shields. I am just the bloke who looks after them and makes sure they turn up. Every time somebody holds one, they are part of it. That is not a nice idea I have bolted on afterwards. That is what they are built for.
I built them crazy strong. They will break you before they break themselves.
I know how rugby teams celebrateEach Shield carries the team that won, and the place it happened
English oak
The name comes from Raeburn Place in Edinburgh, where the game was played, so the name belongs to Scotland. English wood, Scottish name, both teams from that afternoon in one object.
French oak
The name comes from the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands, where that match was played. French wood, Dutch name. Same idea, forty years apart.
The Utrecht Shield went home before it went anywhere else
The wood base was finished in June 2022 and I took it straight over to Utrecht for the 40th anniversary celebrations of that 1982 match. First trip it ever made, back to the city it is named after.
It has been going to matches ever since. Brighton and Bristol for the World Cup, and I got it inside the bowl for England against France, which I was probably not supposed to do. I had an eleven year old with me who was very happy to walk it through security holding it by his side looking completely innocent. The Shield was in the stadium and it was on the line.
The Raeburn Shield went straight into the Six Nations
It was finished in January 2026 and it did not sit around waiting for an occasion. Its first outing was round one of the Six Nations, Twickenham, England defending it against Wales. England won and kept hold of it.
The following weekend it was at Murrayfield. Scotland took it off them. Two weeks old and it had already changed hands, in the city it is named after and the city it was built in. You could not plan that.
That is the bit I love. These are not relics of something that finished a hundred years ago. They are out there right now, in the back of my car and through the turnstiles, and history is happening to them while they are in the room.
How a Shield match should actually run
This is the bit I think about most. Here is what it looks like when it is done properly.
- The Shield is outside the ground on the morning of the match, getting into the hands of anyone who wants it.
- Half an hour before kickoff it goes into the changing room.
- The captain carries it out onto the pitch and sets it on a stand.
- Nobody touches it for eighty minutes.
- At the final whistle the captain either picks it back up, because it is still theirs, or walks it over and hands it to the other captain.
Imagine that on a broadcast. Now imagine being one of the forty thousand people in that ground who had a photo taken with it that morning, watching their captain lift the same object. You were part of it. You held it. That is what I am building towards.
The silver is the next job, and it is a big one
Both Shields are oak and stickers right now. The stickers do a genuinely good job, and everybody who sees the Shields in person tells me they are more impressive than they were expecting.
But they were always meant to have metal on them. Silver across the front with the engraving done properly is a serious amount of money and it is the next thing this project needs. When that goes on, they will be something else entirely.
Freddie Main, Oak and Black, Edinburgh
Freddie is a craftsman up in Edinburgh who runs Oak and Black. He makes exquisite things out of wood, and he has coached women's rugby teams for years. He gifted his time to build the Utrecht Shield. Then he did it again for the Raeburn Shield.
He believed in this when plenty of people did not. That is worth saying plainly, because at the time it was an idea and a spreadsheet and a bloke telling anyone who would listen that rugby had a world title nobody was tracking. Freddie heard that and said yes.
He has been a rock the whole way through. Not just the build, the whole thing. When it has been slow or difficult or I have wondered whether any of it was landing, he has been there. I am enormously grateful, and I am glad it was him. The Shields are going to be carried around rugby grounds long after I am gone, and they were made by a good man who did it because he cared about the game.
Come and get your hands on them
Both Shields travel to matches. If you see one at a ground, come over. That is what it is there for, and there are stickers going spare.
If you want to help with the silver, or own a piece of the actual wood the Shields were cut from, there is more on the support page.