As part of their preparations for tomorrow night's opening 2015 Six Nations match in Wales, England's rugby union players have been training in front of loudspeakers to mimic the effects of playing within a stadium - the Millennium Stadium in this case - where the crowd noise is so loud you can't hear yourself think.

Will it work? Time - eighty minutes plus added-on - will tell.

I've covered a few football games in the Millennium Stadium, including the 2005 Football League Championship play-off final in which West Ham gained a place in the Premier League at the expense of Preston North End thanks to a goal from Bobby Zamora.

There's a hell of an atmosphere in that stadium. And when Zamora struck 12 minutes into the second half - it was buzzing. That was with the roof open.

Bobby Zamora - and a few others - celebrate what turned out to be the only goal of the 2005 Championship Play-off final at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. 
©Getty Images

Two years ago, England's Grand Slam ambitions went west as they were smashed 30-3 by Wales under the closed roof of the Millennium Stadium. The match was played in a furnace of Celtic fire.

Wales's wily Kiwi coach, Warren Gatland, challenged his opposite number Stuart Lancaster last month to play their upcoming match under another closed roof.

Lancaster, particularly light right now of regular first teamers following a glut of injuries, very sensibly elected not to take up Mr Gatland's kind invitation to play in another Welsh bearpit. The agreement was that both teams had to want the roof to be closed, or it would remain open to the elements.

But the habitual volume of Welsh support which reverberates around this superbly designed stadium, roof closed or open, has persuaded Lancaster to send his men out training this week at their Pennyhill Park base with loudspeakers replaying the kind of crowd noise they will be expecting tomorrow evening. They have even been playing hymns.

England's rugby union players in training this week at Pennyhill Park ahead of tomorrow's night's opening Six Nations game against Wales in the Millennium Stadium
©Getty Images

"It is to try to replicate for the players who have not been there how sound reverberates," said Lancaster.

It's a weird thing with stadiums - stadia, if you insist. When it comes to atmosphere, capacity is almost an irrelevance.

For years Arsenal's home until 2006, Highbury, had the nickname - among visiting rather than home supporters - of "The Library", a reference to the hush which would sometimes descend upon the stadium in despite of its post-Taylor report capacity of 38,419.

Okay - Arsenal now have a 60,000 capacity stadium just down the road from what is now a customised, high-end housing development in which the listed Art Deco East Stand and West Stands are preserved and incorporated.

I've covered a fair few matches at both the Arsenal grounds - and the Emirates also has its becalmed moments, although once roused, the home faithful still generate a fair old din within.

But, to quote one of The Beatles most beautiful tunes, There are Places I Remember, all my life, though some have changed...

Roker Park.  I was there one rain-drenched Saturday in 1990 and heard the thing I'd previously only heard about: the Roker Roar. It was engulfing.

Danny Blanchflower, fabled captain of the Tottenham Hotspur 1961 Double-winning team, once said that having travelled the world the Roker Roar was the most awesome display of support he had ever experienced. Praise indeed from a man who was never afraid to voice an unpopular or dissenting opinion.

I also remember Plough Lane - home to Wimbledon's self-styled Crazy Gang - soon after they had earned their upstart 1-0 FA Cup final win over Liverpool in 1988. The capacity was below 20,000 - the record attendance was the 18,080 which turned up to watch a 1935 FA Amateur Cup tie - and when I visited the figure was well below that.

But the din, under a tin roof - unbelievable! That atmosphere, allied to the fear factor of players such as John Fashanu and Vinnie Jones, was enough to unhinge the competitive intent of visiting teams.

Last summer I was happy to report on a hugely eventful European Athletics Championship in the reconstructed Letzigrund Stadium at Zurich. The atmosphere was grand, assisted in no small part by the hyperactive efforts of the mascot, Cooly, who was an undercover athlete - decathlete in fact - of high talent.

But the new stadium lacks the ear-buzzing potentialities offered by the old version, which I first visited in 1989, when Roger Kingdom produced the highlight of the evening with a world 110m hurdles record of 12.92sec.

Scotland's Liz McColgan running at the Weltklasse meeting in Zurich's old Letzigrund Stadium in 1991 ©Getty Images

I recall being astonished at the noise levels generated by those in the stand away to my right, beyond the finish line, as they saluted successive athletic efforts, their roars reverberating within the low roof, while those at the front thumped the advertising hoardings into tribute.

In more than a quarter of a century reporting on athletics (OH MY GOD) I have never heard anything to match the old Letzigrund, although Oslo ran it close at times. It was like a being in a football crowd.

The England rugby preparation is an intriguing, but by no means original approach to match preparation. It put me in mind of the work done by the British archery team in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics.

Wales beat England 30-3 in 2013 under a closed roof in the Millennium Stadium. Tomorrow night the roof will be open - but the din will still be enormous ©Getty Images

Two years after the Delhi Commonwealth Games, where well-meaning but partisan crowd noise had a clear effect on archers at a number of key points within competition, Alison Williamson and her fellow archers spent hours practising at Lilleshall to a background of recorded crowd noise.

For the Olympic trials the noise levels rose still further as more than 1,000 local schoolchildren were invited in to bang drums, blow whistles and raise their voices.

"The letters of invitation said 'Please make as much noise as possible'," recalled Williamson.

"It might even have asked for the noise when the archers were shooting. I had an eight-year-old a few feet away from me screaming at the top of her lungs - you have to ignore it."

Sometimes it's not the noise of opposing fans that provides the potential distraction - it's that of your own supporters.

Last year, for instance, Australian Rules Football Club Port Adelaide had to prepare for matches in their own revamped stadium, the Adelaide Oval, to recordings of their own crowd.

Such was the noise level in an arena whose curved roof structure retained and redistributed sound from spectators that the Port Adelaide boys were having trouble hearing each other's instructions on match day above the roar provided by their fans.

A similar approach was taken by British Paralympian cyclist Mark Colbourne as he prepared for the 2012 Games by downloading crowd noise off YouTube and playing it to himself as he trained for the coming cacophone of the Olympic Park Velodrome.

In the arena where Sir Chris Hoy, Jason Kenny, Victoria Pendleton and Laura Trott had wheeled to glory earlier in the month, Colbourne - who had suffered a life-changing Para-gliding accident three years earlier - picked up a silver medal in the C1-3 kilo time trial.

Chris Hoy wins keirin gold at the London 2012 velodrome amidst a crescendo of noise ©AFP/Getty Images

"I downloaded clips from YouTube of the Olympics and the World Cup meeting here to replicate the noise. But nothing can prepare you for the volume this place generates. By the third lap, I could feel the crowd's noise vibrating my helmet, and that's when they give you the extra pedal revolution."

What hymns, I wonder, might have given England's rugby team extra pedal revolution tomorrow night? Fight the Good Fight, or perhaps We Plough The Fields and Scatter might have suited the forwards. As for the backs - Amazing Grace? I'll Fly Away?

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.