The supremo of World Rugby, Brett Gosper says that the rugby union world cup has been “the biggest and the best of all time”. I have absolutely no doubt that this is true and measured in terms of money, as these things usually are these days, it’s the biggest by light years. But will rugby union break out from where it currently is in terms of profile and in terms of who is actually playing and watching the game? In England, I have my doubts.
I do not pretend my social circle is in any way representative of the nation, but once England went out of the tournament, almost everyone I know lost interest. I know I did, despite promising myself that I would stick with it until the end. The fact that the home nation was so crap drained my interest. I doubt that many neutrals will tune in to watch the final between Australia and New Zealand, the most predictable outcome of any world cup in any sport ever. Most people who will watch will be those with a level of interest in the sport.
I am probably like the rugby fan who has a passing interest in the football world cup. They know it’s going on, but it would take something significant to get them interested enough to watch. I enjoyed Japan’s defeat of South Africa for reasons of schadenfreude which is never a healthy state of affairs, but I can’t say I enjoyed any of it all that much. England were leaden-footed against Fiji, dull against Wales and hammered by Australia. A final, meaningless game against the amateurs of Uruguay did not register with my antenna one tiny bit.
ITV’s coverage, I fear, didn’t help. There were some successes, like Gareth Thomas, Jonny Wilkinson and Michael Lynagh, but whoever had the idea of having smug, self-satisfied and plainly upper class John Inverdale as lead presenter needs their head examining. The best bits of ITV’s wooden coverage was made much worse by Inverdale and, I’m sorry to say, Sir Clive Woodward’s certainty on every subject he comments on. And the commentary teams seemed to assume we all knew what was happening on the pitch which, to your average viewer, remained a mystery. Every time a penalty was given, as collective “What was that for?” echoed silently round the land, only for one of the pundits to effectively guess what had happened. ITV just sounded middle class and twee, the very image the RFU should be seeking to change in the game rather than confirm people’s prejudices that the game itself is middle class and twee. It hasn’t changed mine.
The fact that the rugby union world cup is barely a world tournament in any sense of the description doesn’t help. Most participating countries are there to make up the numbers which is the same with most sports, to be fair. We might as well have started and finished with Australia v New Zealand as the final we all knew it would be, although I suppose not so much money would have been made.
For the administrators of the game, the world cup has been a success but in England it has not attracted the interest it otherwise might have done had England been any good. Can you imagine what the pubs would have been like if the home nation had reached even the quarter finals? I doubt whether people other than the faithful will tune in tomorrow and even they might be struggling to find the energy to watch the pointless third place game tonight between Argentina and South Africa. I have a pub to visit that I hope won’t have a telly in.
