England have the capacity to win World Cup, says RFU chief Ian Ritchie

As rain lashes down on an empty Twickenham, it is not easy to immediately detect the dawning of a bright new age for English rugby.

A handful of bedraggled tourists set off on a stadium tour to the strains of an anecdote about how the royal box is being upgraded for English rugby’s biggest moment, while staff in the shop fit out displays with “My first Rugby World Cup” bibs and associated limited edition merchandise.

But up in the Rugby Football Union offices that three years ago were riven by one of the organisation’s bouts of self-immolation, the chief executive who arrived from the lawns of the All England Club to calm troubled waters is unequivocal about what the new year means.

“It is going to be the most significant year in the history of rugby in this country,” says Ian Ritchie, who (with a bit of help from the chairman Bill Beaumont) has restored the feelgood factor in a whirl of activity that has hidden the odd flash of steel. “There is no doubt to my mind this is a seminal moment for English rugby.”

In contrast to his counterpart at the Football Association, Greg Dyke, with whom he shares a background in broadcasting, the 61-year-old is more given to quiet diplomacy than grandstanding. Which makes his assertion this will be the biggest year for English rugby since William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it all the more striking.

“It’s hard to overestimate the importance of 2015. It’s a huge opportunity,” he says, rattling off the list of statistics of variable provenance with which any major event host must become au fait. “We’re hosting a huge event, the third biggest in the world – a 4 billion TV audience, 2.5m tickets, 500,000 people visiting the country, investment of well over £1bn. Can it galvanise rugby in this country? I think it will.”

The success of September’s Rugby World Cup, being staged by an RFU subsidiary led by the England Rugby 2015 chief executive Debbie Jevans, as an event seems secure given the huge demand for tickets and growing excitement but as England head into a Six Nations campaign during which Stuart Lancaster must hone his preferred XV, the prospects for the home side remain delicately in the balance.

Beyond that, Ritchie’s aim to use the tournament as the springboard to change the perception of the sport beyond its natural heartlands and inspire a new generation of converts will need investment, luck and no little judgment. As he freely admits, when he was appointed in December 2011 the only way was up. His short-lived predecessor John Steele had been forced out after failing to play politics and the divisive chairman that caused much of the tumult, Martyn Thomas, was not far behind him.

“The beauty of arriving after all that has happened is you’re blindly ignorant of what has gone on and there’s only one way to go,” he says.

On the pitch, things were at a similarly low ebb in the wake of the chaotic, booze-soaked 2011 World Cup campaign in New Zealand, the departure of Martin Johnson and the leaking of an internal report that prolonged the pain.

Out on the muddy pitches that sustain the game, the picture was not much better with the RFU fined a seven-figure sum for failing to hit participation targets and struggling to retain players as they progressed from mini-rugby to the adult game.

One of Ritchie’s first acts was to appoint Lancaster and the fortunes of the chief executive, his chairman and England’s head coach – who all arrived within six months of one another – are bound together as the RFU hurtles towards its World Cup date with destiny.

Narrow defeats to New Zealand and South Africa in the autumn Iinternationals have not dented Ritchie’s faith in Lancaster or his team – not that he could admit it if they had, having handed them all six-year contracts taking them through to the 2019 World Cup in Japan.

“There’s no question we were competitive in 2014. We played New Zealand four times in 2014 and we were competitive, no doubt about that.” But England lost all four. “We did. And that’s unfortunate. I don’t like that at all. Will we be better in 2015? I think we will, for a whole variety of reasons. I think we were very close in 2014 and I think we will be even better in 2015.”

Could Steffon Armitage, the Toulon flanker rendered ineligible because of his decision to play in France, be part of that success? “We’ll have to look at it but I think the policy is the right one for professional rugby in England and the players know what the rule is. What is an exceptional circumstance? Who knows. We talked earlier about injuries, form and all these sorts of things.”

Ask if Lancaster, who has imbued England with a strong sense of purpose and earned praise for his forensic approach but is yet to settle on his best team, is safe even if England bomb out of a tough World Cup group, Ritchie goes about as far as he can without giving a cast-iron guarantee.

“Let’s put it this way. If we lost all of our group stage games, you’ve still got to have a belief in talent and ability. You have a knowledge and understanding of people who are good at their job. They are judged on a public stage on some things that are not always within their control as a coaching team,” he says.

“There’s no point chopping and changing what happens with the elite team if you’ve not got a clarity of pathway from 16 or 17. Sustainable success is what it’s all about.”

That Ritchie felt it necessary to underscore his commitment with six-year contracts, not only for Lancaster but for Andy Farrell, Graham Rowntree, Mike Catt and the rest of the coaching team, was criticised by some for giving them a safety net before a World Cup test on which they had always insisted they should be judged.

“As you know, none of them are exactly lacking commitment. The argument that was put around was that they might relax. I felt like saying ‘have you met these guys?’ We just wanted to remove it as an issue. You want them to feel their 110% focus is not on their next job or whether they’ve still got a job but whether they can win the World Cup.”

Given England’s all-conquering under-20s side and Lancaster’s emphasis on player development it is impossible to escape the whiff of expectation management – that 2015 would be nice but it is in 2019 that this group of players will have their best chance. Ritchie insists otherwise.

“One of my favourite phrases is ‘God give me patience and give it to me now’. We hate losing games. Let’s be clear – I don’t think we should be doing something that is developmental or a work in progress. I don’t agree with that at all. We have the capacity, the resources, the people,” he says.

“If you look at how many grand slams England have won, it’s disappointingly low. [But] this is not a quick fix – ‘Let’s change it, sack it, do it’. It’s got to be built over a period of time.”

It is this air of calm that has given Ritchie the breathing space to play a key role in sorting out some of the knottier problems facing the game beyond Twickenham – from playing the peacemaker in picking a way through the fraught negotiations over the future of European domestic competition to compensating Premiership sides over the World Cup.

Ritchie is also convinced the RFU has made strides in connecting better with the wider game. “The senior teams will ultimately galvanise but a regional development officer in Gloucester is equally important. It’s got to be all joined up and connected.”

But whatever the domestic concerns, it is the World Cup that looms largest. However much Ritchie emphasises the extent to which spectators will buy into the event as a whole and get behind the underdogs, it will take English success at the sharp end of the tournament to produce the boost to the wider game he hopes will follow.

“There is a focus on what the England senior men’s team are doing but other things are equally important – look at what is going on in the growth of women’s rugby, what’s happening with 18 to 24-year-olds, what’s happening in schools.”

The RFU must learn from the failures of 2003, when the opportunities that arose from Jonny Wilkinson’s last-ditch drop goal were squandered, and the England and Wales Cricket Board’s failure to capitalise on the Ashes victory of 2005.

More recently, the jury remains very much out on whether the London 2012 legacy will be delivered in terms of inspiring a healthier nation. The main lesson, says Ritchie, was to invest upfront in the capacity to deal with the hoped-for upsurge in interest.

“The difficult challenge Locog had in 2012 was that they had multiple sports. We are the single governing body, we started investing two years ago and we’re continuing to invest. There are no excuses. We’ve already invested in facilities, people, coaches, balls, all those things. We’ve got the control and the means.

“We should be looking back in 2016 or 2017 and saying ‘what did the World Cup mean for rugby?’ It’s actually pretty simple – more people playing, volunteering, connected to rugby. We’ve got the best possible shop window in 2015 in order to do that.”

The “England connected” rhetoric and endless references to rubgy’s “core values” – as embodied by Gerald Laing’s sculpture outside Twickenham’s south stand – can feel cloying but Ritchie is right to emphasise their importance.

He was lucky that before his untimely departure Steele had cleared out some of the Twickenham dead wood and recruited well. As the director of development, Steve Grainger has embarked on an ambitious programme to expand into state schools previously suspicious of the sport by emphasising its wider values. The commercial director, Sophie Goldschmidt, has not only replenished the sponsorship roster since 2011’s annus horribilis but, aided by Lancaster’s emphasis on culture and values, restored the sport’s brand image.

“Look at where we are in terms of revenue, income and brand reputation – it is interesting to me how you can change that fairly quickly. But you can also lose it fairly quickly,” Ritchie says.

Aided by a Twickenham revamp that has boosted gate receipts, commercial success has helped increase turnover to the point where around £80m a year can be reinvested in the game.

“I read these things saying ‘someone is getting terribly commercial at the RFU’ as though it’s a terrible sin. It’s to get money to put into the game,” Ritchie says. “We have been investing for the last two years and that’s what we need to do. The economics are important but what we should be about is enthusing people. This is like a childhood dream from my point of view. This is fun, it’s supposed be about enjoying yourselves.”

And he genuinely seems like he is but if English rugby’s reborn image is what will sell it in every sense – from its appeal to state schools to the feelgood buzz it gives a Twickenham crowd that is more engaged than of yore to its commercial appeal to sponsors – there remain significant threats.

They range from isolated incidents such as the homophobic abuse of referee Nigel Owens (“we’ve got to give a clear message about what we won’t tolerate”) at Twickenham to systemic issues such as growing fears over the use of steroids by young players desperate to break into the game.

“It’s wrong to brush this under the carpet and pretend it doesn’t exist. You’ve got to attack it head on,” says Ritchie, who wrestles with how to balance the need for progress and modern standards of corporate best practice while jealously guarding rugby’s traditions. “Rugby only went pro in 1995. That is an astonishingly short time to adapt. For rugby, we want to be seen as modern and young but we never want to forget the traditions, the values, what has gone before.

“If you stay as a dyed in the wool, old fashioned dinosaur, you’re not going to progress. End of. That’s true of any institution and it’s particularly true of rugby.”

And he is well aware that recent history suggests the next crisis is only ever just around the corner.

“The history of sport is littered with things that seemed to be going fairly well and then hit the buffers. It could be anything.”

A calm sense of purpose are not characteristics readily associated with many sports governing bodies, let alone the RFU. The events out on the Twickenham pitch will determine whether the feelgood atmosphere in the boardroom lasts the year.

“Sporting events are about great memories. The ultimate memory would be England winning. Do we want to do that? Of course we do,” Ritchie says.

“The other side is that we want more and more people want to take up a great game. That is what we want to achieve.”

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