Across the front of the Rugby Football Union’s lavish strategic-plan document covering 2012 to 2017 are emblazoned the words “Seizing the Opportunity”. It vowed that during that period, in the middle of which the world’s richest and best-resourced rugby union was hosting a World Cup – that the RFU chief executive, Ian Ritchie, said represented the biggest opportunity for English rugby since William Webb Ellis picked up the ball – it would redefine the way the game is seen in this country.
Saturday’s humiliation at Twickenham, compounding the desperate missed opportunities a week earlier against Wales and sealing a World Cup departure within 17 days, puts all that in doubt.
Ritchie and the coach, Stuart Lancaster, appointed in the wake of the New Zealand 2011 meltdown, have done much to reconnect England with the wider game and the public, to restore pride in the shirt and to put the RFU as an institution on an even keel.
But, judged purely on their World Cup performance, things have regressed. And that will have a knock-on effect off the pitch.
Beyond the regret at England’s failure on the pitch and the wider disappointment of all those who had paid hundreds of pounds for their tickets and others watching on television, there is a wider sense of deflation at an opportunity lost.
Purely in terms of spreading the game’s gospel to new parts of the country, a vision already diluted by the need to get as many bums on seats as possible to deliver World Rugby the £80m it required as part of the hosting agreement, next week’s dead rubber against Uruguay in Manchester already looks more poisoned chalice than golden opportunity.
It is hard to imagine those who have paid £150 for their tickets feeling too well disposed towards an England side who are already out.
But beyond that the bigger missed opportunity is out there in the fields. As bleary-eyed youngsters headed to rugby clubs across the country on Sunday morning still hoping that England’s elimination was a bad dream, Ritchie will have been bound to reflect on his bold legacy promises. Lancaster, too, has made much of the positive impact an energising England performance could have on the grassroots. Much of that is now in doubt.
The chances of challenging football’s grip on the minds of primary school children and inspiring a spike in those prepared to play, volunteer, referee and so on at their local club are now that much slimmer.
“I think we have all got to work hard to mitigate what we may have lost out on,” Ritchie said the morning after the night before at a doleful Pennyhill Park, where a purpose-built training centre stands as part of an estimated £5m investment in England’s World Cup hopes. “We will see what happens in terms of participation, numbers and legacy and all those sort of things we’ve talked about.
“Clearly there would have been a huge positive had we progressed – in a broader sense of the word, not a material sense – because I don’t think the material sense is what is significant at the moment. But the key thing is to take the learnings and move on.”
Which, in Ritchie’s long-winded manner, is a way of saying that they will be fine for cash but the wider scale of the opportunity missed may not be clear for generations.
The RFU is a much more stable beast than it was in 2011, when it almost tore itself apart after England’s World Cup elimination, and some of its good work will continue regardless. The RFU development director, Steve Grainger, will continue with his impressive plans to introduce the sport into 750 state schools by 2019.
The modest target to increase adult participation from 190,000 to 215,000 by 2017 will stay in place. But the huge wave of popular support and emotion that would have accompanied an England run to the latter stages of the tournament and could have turbocharged those plans will now be absent.
In 2003 the RFU had the opposite problem. A brief spike in interest as a result of England’s last-ditch triumph in Australia was wasted because the capacity was not in place to deal with it.
This time the planning is there but not the spark of inspiration. One year ago World Rugby’s chief executive, Brett Gosper, told the Guardian: “The economics will work wherever England get to. But to really get that magical atmosphere and the home population behind it, it would be great for the host side to go all the way.”
When the RFU’s review swings into action after this World Cup the focus will be on the future of Lancaster, his coaching staff and his players.
With the analysis available in the modern game, their failure can be measured to the most microscopic degree. The scale of the missed opportunity in wider terms is much harder to quantify.
