Men’s Rugby World Cup: Rugby’s entertainers must shine – before it ceases to be entertainment

Re-post from Guardian:

These should be vintage times for rugby union. The Heineken Cup pool stages are rising towards a climax; a hard-fought Six Nations Championship lies ahead, followed by a World Cup. The Ashes have been lain to rest, the global sporting stage is relatively clear. So why does it feel as if the future of the professional game is dangerously reliant on a handful of players, clubs and wealthy individuals, without whom the whole edifice might topple in upon itself?

Consider one or two salient facts. The World Cup in New Zealand will yield a financial loss of more than £20m for the host union. This week Premier Rugby’s chief executive, Mark McCafferty, said the glossy image of the French Top 14 was unsustainable. Attendances in the AvivaPremiership and Magners League are dipping, admittedly in a hostile economic climate. The on-field spectacle, particularly on soft winter pitches, is massively dependent on how the referee performs. Defences have never been tighter. One in every four scrums across Europe is collapsing, regardless of underfoot conditions. This week Maidstone were docked 50 points after a Gravesend player was blinded in one eye and his assailant could not be singled out. Sexy stuff.

Fortunately there are some upbeat stories out there. Also this week the ink-stained denizens of the Rugby Writers’ Club broke new ground by giving their top prize, the Pat Marshall Award, to the England women’s flanker Maggie Alphonsi. The evening’s speaker was due to have been Gareth Thomas, the first high-profile union player to make his homosexuality a matter of public record. The Rugby Football Union did announce a new six-year deal with Bollinger Champagne yesterday, but those who still see rugby as a sport inhabited solely by Colonel Mustards in red corduroys are out of date.

The only snag is that some of the key ingredients that give the game its sparkle are in short supply. How many gifted backs with a penchant for adventure, for example, are fighting for the public’s attention?

Rugby remains the ultimate team game. Yet celebrities such as Gavin Henson – and Danny Cipriani – are also illustrative of the game’s recurring dilemma: how to woo a new audience while retaining your virtue and integrity? Significantly, the gap in expectation between the professionals and the casual onlooker has seldom been wider. The former want consistency, the latter want to be surprised. “I wouldn’t hold your breath,” muttered Martin Johnson this week, asked if he was considering joining Twitter. Those striving to take the game to Abu Dhabi and beyond believe coaches and players need to extend their creative horizons.

“There can be a big disconnect between club playing departments and their commercial functions,” says Jon Varney, Premier Rugby’s commercial director. “That’s an attitude that has to change. We’re all in it together.” The one-dimensional Christmas “big games” at Wembley and Twickenham did not exactly help. “You don’t want it to become the Harlem Globetrotters … that’s not what we’re about,” Varney cautions. “But you do want the sport looking at its best when you’re trying to attract new people to it.”

Which is why, with due respect to forwards everywhere, more entertainers are needed. There are, perhaps, half a dozen household names in English rugby: Johnson, Jonny Wilkinson, Sir Clive Woodward, Lawrence Dallaglio, Mike Tindall (by dint of his impending royal marriage) and Will Carling. Only one is still playing.

Purists argue, rightly, that England’s new breed are more than worthy of attention, that Courtney Lawes, Ben Youngs, Dan Cole and Tom Croft can be as good as any England players of any era. But none of them, impressive young men as they are, can yet work a room like Dallaglio, nor be as conversationally waspish as Austin Healey, let alone Peter Ustinov. The game they play also encourages less self-expression than it once did, particularly at the top level. When Shane Williams, Brian O’Driscoll and Geordan Murphy retire, you could argue there will be barely a single outside-back in Britain and Ireland who is touched by genius. It is not a criticism, merely the consequence of too little space, myth-busting slow-motion replays and the preference of most coaches for the prosaic over the poetic.

There is nothing wrong with that in a results-driven, physical business. But what happens when everyone does the same? What if rugby, for all its tribal appeal, ceases to cater for twinklers as well as the thunderous? The temptation will either be to wallow in the past deeds of David Campese, Jonathan Davies, Serge Blanco et al or to proclaim some undeserving talents as world-beaters. “The reality is that the yesteryear players have sometimes been stronger brands than the clubs themselves,” Varney admits, explaining why Premier Rugby is delighted the number of live Premiership games has increased from 33 to 69 this season.

“But if you start to build iconic individuals you’re very reliant, in terms of image rights, on their personal performance and fitness. If you build them up and they’re not around you’re left with a fragile marketing platform.” The shortfall becomes more noticeable here when the few global superstars who relocate north are lured to France. Even within the RFU they would love to tweak the Premiership salary cap to allow at least one genuine world-class performer per club to inspire the emerging homegrown youngsters. “The top-class overseas guys are worth their weight in gold,” confirms the RFU’s Rob Andrew. “The only issue is that they don’t all play in the same positions.”

For some, though, it is all currently about survival. “The market’s knackered … it’s incredibly tough for everybody,” reports one prominent rugby deal-maker. “But it’s all relative. There are businesses going to the wall, there are retailers squealing after one of the worst Christmases ever. Rugby’s still got a lot going for it.” Maybe, but nothing is forever. Good luck to Dan Carter, Quade Cooper, Ben Foden and Sonny Bill Williams. Between now and late October, their sport needs its creative types to recapture the world’s imagination.