Rugby World Cup fails to capture imagination like Olympics

Under a flyover near the Docklands Light Rail stop at Canning Town in East London and quite a distance from the nearest Olympic venue there she was. An Olympic volunteer, a girl in her 20s in runners, a volunteer’s uniform and a volunteer’s utility belt for everything she could possibly need.

Olympic venues. Water bottle. Map. Check. Swiss army knife. Mobile phone. Underground map. Check. London bus timetable. Factor 50. A transparent waterproof hoodie. Check. First aid kit. Another water bottle. A friendly smile.

This was the London of the Olympics. It was on every corner in every building. It took over the city like a benign virus and everything everywhere was infected. London became the Olympic Games for almost three weeks. It wasn't the host city. It was the venue.

Three years on the Rugby World Cup (RWC) has arrived and its claims are large. It is breaking records of previous events in revenue, in numbers attending matches and in social media tweets, mentions and RWC2015 hashtags. But after two weeks it's questionable whether the RWC has penetrated the London psyche in anything like the way the Olympics did and there are valid reasons why that is so.

Every day at the Olympics Britain had dozens of athletes competing in events and every day they were winning medals. All Londoners saw was success tumbling from boxing at the Docklands, cycling from the Velodrome and athletics from the track. Almost every day for the entirety of the event from the end of July and into August there was a British athlete on a podium.

Britain left the summer Olympics with 65 medals, 29 of them gold, 17 silver and 19 bronze finishing third in the medal table rankings. At least one medal was awarded in 17 different sports, 11 of them gold.

The RWC is a different animal and in pockets of London such as Bayswater and Paddington, even in what might be rugby lovin’ areas like South Kensington, it has little visible presence.

A taxi driver at the Irish base of Burton on Trent didn’t know the Rugby World Cup was on. Another taxi taking passengers from Twickenham after the opening match and ceremony talked football and his passion for Chelsea.

But even for the fans of the game and those who breeze in because of the occasion, it is a tournament that flares up and recedes and has had difficulty holding on to the high points when England, Wales or the All Blacks are not playing.

Continuous presence

The nature of rugby means games need to be spaced a week apart although in some instances unreasonably just four days have separated matches. The event is like a sinus curve of highs and lows and has struggled for a continuous presence.

There are pockets of rugby turf which is marked territory around Richmond, Kingston on Thames, Gloucester, Twickenham and the Stoop not far from Twickenham Stadium.

Near Richmond there is a “Fanzone” wrapped in RWC logos and sponsors names with a Ferris wheel, giant screens and beer in plastic glasses. But it too has the look of a wind-swept seaside town in winter when there is no match at Twickenham.

London is big enough to host the RWC but almost too big for a snug fit, so vastly eclectic and with so many events taking place that the RWC seems almost incidental in the monstrous every day beat of its heart.

What makes the city truly great also has the capacity to diminish its constituent parts and over the first few weeks that has been the RWC’s lot, all compounded by a struggling England team playing for its life against Australia this weekend. It was Japan who delivered the one thing in short supply – heroes.

But the issue may also be cultural in that people here tend to be one or the other football or rugby and while Michael Cheika this week expressed his positive astonishment that almost 90,000 turned up at Wembley for a game between Ireland and Romania, there is frailty to rugby's grip on the population.

The RFU has their flock and it’s substantial. No doubt about that but how many converts will they have and how many kids are throwing rugby balls around Hyde Park at the weekends. The answer to that is few. It is football. Football. Football. . .

The London Metro on Wednesday, its demographic a general population of subway users, had six soccer pages, one on rugby and one on British Triathlete Alistair Bronlee on the Rio build-up.

Specific audience

The

Telegraph

, aimed at a more specific audience and demographic that targets rugby buyers, has between eight and 10 pages of RWC coverage daily. But London has not become the global rugby village with team bases largely in the satellite towns of Bagshot, Guilford, Birmingham and Exeter. Rather than the game storming the city with profile and events, it has largely left it.

The Olympic Village has many things wrong with it but adding a profile to the event is not one.

The RWC proudly declared last week they sold 50 per cent more corporate seats than the Olympics did three years ago. There is no reason not to believe that. But in doing so, it invites comparisons that might not be so flattering.