Rugby World Cup: 6 things to know about the All Blacks' new base

Sam Cane, Sonny Bill Williams and Tawera Kerr Barlow pose in Darlington. Photo / Getty

Darlington is a sleepy English town in the north of the country. Here's six things you need to know about the All Blacks' new home base.

1) Darlington lies in the heart of Durham mining country, but has no mines of its own. It has a steam locomotive museum and a Buddhist centre, a rich industrial heritage and, according to the London Daily Telegraph "a thriving gay scene". It has a handsome cobbled town square in the middle of town and a covered market selling several dozen varieties of pies. It is simultaneously urban and rural: 45 minutes down the A1 motorway from Newcastle, two hours by train from London, and yet hidden from plain sight. A big town, but in the country, surrounded by farmland. It will remind the players of New Zealand.

2) It also has a place called South Park, which is not a TV show but instead "one of the prettiest urban parks" in north east England. Which is just as well as the Telegraph describes Darlington Town Hall as "one of the ugliest public buildings anywhere in the western world".

3) The local rugby club Darlington Mowden Park is hosting the All Blacks. Club boss Danny Brown said they thought they had won Lotto when told by World Cup organisers that the All Blacks were coming to town. If preparations are anything to go by, Darlington is determined to make the most of it. An All Blacks flag flies from the Town Hall mast. There are banners, tarted-up shop windows, a rugby-themed street theatre performance in the town centre.

4) All 4,000 free tickets for a kids' coaching session with the All Blacks on Thursday - their only open session throughout the whole tournament - were snapped up in the space of 24 hours. Darlington is going All Blacks crazy as the world champions prepare for their game against Tonga at St James' Park at nearby Newcastle on Saturday morning NZ time.

5) You see the Darlington Arena where the All Blacks will train about five minutes before you actually get there. It rises from the landscape like an alien craft: an enormous 25,000 seater venue, built in 2003 by George Reynolds, then the chairman of Darlington Football Club. It was a wildly optimistic vanity project; Darlington were in League Two at the time, and could never hope to fill even a fraction of those seats. Six months later, the club was forced into administration. Six months after that, Reynolds was arrested after being found with £500,000 ($NZ1.2m) in cash in the boot of his car, and sent to jail for tax evasion. In 2012, facing financial ruin, the football club folded, leaving the stadium empty.

6) When that happened, Danny Brown and Mowden Park seized the moment. "A few years ago this was a very small club on the other side of town. We had a clubhouse that maybe held 100 people," he explains. The club's rise has been astonishing. Over the past decade they have ascended rapidly through the divisions, from north-east regional leagues to the point where they are now within two promotions of the Premiership. They have 21 men's and women's representative teams, from under-six up. Purchasing the Darlington Arena means they now have the biggest single-use club rugby ground in England, even if the average gate is still only about 1,200. And with the town's football club forced to start anew from the very bottom of the pyramid, Mowden Park senses a chance to convert an entire generation to the delights of the oval-ball game - with a little help from their illustrious guests. - London Telegraph and staff writers.