The latest “ultimate team talk” was posted online yesterday by England 2015, the organisers of next year’s rugby union World Cup, with Charles Dance in the head coach role. It is one of those “we can take on the world” motivational rants, not quite up there with Jim Telfer’s infamous “Everest” speech to the 1997 Lions because Dance cannot use the F-word three times in a sentence, and clearly reminiscent of Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday, but then again it is a PR campaign and not a Hollywood movie. And it does claim that Leeds, Manchester and Brighton are “the backbone” of the country, which seems a bit harsh on Dorking.
More pertinently, Dance forecasts “the biggest, finest, most glorious World Cup ever”. Good luck, of course, to that. And: “We’re going to grab the moment with both hands.”
That moment is kind of now. The professional season starts in the British Isles on Friday. From then on, it is pretty much non-stop until the World Cup final in 14 months. This is rugby’s biggest chance to make an impact in these islands — not just England — since Jonny’s dropped goal in 2003. In which case, if the moment is indeed grabbed with both hands, here is a vision of what the game could soon look like.
It could have scrum halves feeding the ball in straight at the scrum, it could have no more opera singers in gowns slit to the thigh performing the national anthems and it could stop the pre-match firework displays that are so excessive that the first five minutes of a game are like Gorillas in the Mist. These are the easy wins.
We could also suggest no more collapsed scrums, but that would just be wishful thinking. Yet what could be achieved is the giving of a free ref-link (which allows fans to listen to the live feed from the referee’s microphone) to every spectator at every game. There is little more prohibitive to the new rugby fan, or even the old rugby fan, than not understanding what they have paid to see; a ref-link at least helps explain.
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Rugby union does not need to be a game only for those in the know — as in, if you weren’t handed the keys at your school, then you cannot come in. If the World Cup could have one outstanding achievement, it would be to dispel the idea that rugby is for us and not for them.
Imagine a world, by the end of October 2015, when caricaturists no longer label “Twickenham man” as the bloke in red corduroys who talks like a 1950s newsreader. For sure, that man is out there in the car park, but you need only go to any club ground to understand how tired and tiresome are these old stereotypes.
The RFU has plans for these clubs during the World Cup: to make them a vast social community, to invite new people inside and have them embrace the community values, to make this the launch pad for significant growth in the game. That is the opportunity that the World Cup presents. The Union should go farther, therefore, confiscate Martin Johnson’s road bike and persuade him to get back among it with them.
Sorry, Johnno, but can’t we just run your Captain Curmudgeon a long hot bath and invite him to defrost and come out of hiding? Yes, the 2011 World Cup campaign was quite some disaster, but it is not like you invented global warming; all is now forgiven. Charles Dance invites you to “stand tall, stand proud”. What about just going round the clubs on a Johnno Roadshow? No press need to come. You could even go on your bike.
The best ambassadors for the brave new post-World Cup world, though, are not Johnno and the old household names, but the present England team. And they do not need to win a World Cup to be that. Anyone could win that World Cup; Jacques Burger could lift the World Cup for Namibia and still, in an ideal world, the England team would be household names too. They would still be recognised when they walk down the street; they would still be relaxed in the public eye; they would be superstars. Right now, they do not have that profile.
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This is a dilemma for the England management. The game has an opportunity to expand, yet the safe impulse is always to prevent the players from having the superstar profiles to help it to grow. The players are trained to be wary of saying the wrong thing. One of the sadder sights of recent times was watching Danny Cipriani, a “character” if you can forgive the inverted commas, giving an interview to assembled media in May after he had been recalled by England and selected for the summer tour to New Zealand. It was as if the Dementors had been put on day release from the wizard world and sucked the personality from him.
It is nearly 20 years since rugby union went professional, so of course your modern-day senior international player is far different from his amateur forefathers. He has been spotted early, been told how good he is from an early age, been paid early, reared, shaped and refined. Yet still he is a pretty decent product; it must be the responsibility of the game, in the next 14 months, to exhibit that.
This is what rugby could look like: bigger, yet the same. Greater numbers in the stands and in the clubhouses, yet Saracens players still mingling with punters on the pitch after the game, for instance, or Harlequins players going to the Kings Bar after they have showered.
Or Wasps honouring Doreen Collis. In the summer, she passed away; she had worked in the kitchen at Wasps’ Twyford Avenue training ground for 30 years. She was known around the club for her cheery demeanour and her tireless, tuneless whistling. Eight years ago she was Club Person of the Year; after she had unknowingly turned down an invitation to the annual awards dinner, Lawrence Dallaglio made a special presentation to her in the club kitchen.
Members of the coaching staff attended her funeral; a special bench now sits at the training ground in her memory.
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If rugby can fulfil its ambitions to grow because of the World Cup, and still look like that, it will indeed have grabbed the moment with both hands.