England exit Rugby World Cup with pride but need more than grit to woo public

Brave lads. What lads. Bring them home in garlands and rosettes, these English heroes on a foreign field. All is forgiven, Steve Borthwick. One in the eye for the critics and the doubters. Sport is cruel, fine margins, and all that. This weekend England will depart the World Cup with its pride intact, with its dignity salvaged, with its future restored and with its public engrossed. With everything, in fact, except the thing they came for.

But as England began to process their stirring 16-15 defeat by South Africa in Saturday’s semi-final, this last point felt like the most minor of inconveniences. Owen Farrell declared he was “proud to be English”. “Fantastic,” scrum-half Alex Mitchell replied when he was asked how he thought England’s campaign had gone. “Before the World Cup people said we wouldn’t do very well and struggle to get out of the group.” Maybe the real World Cup, on reflection, was the haters they managed to annoy along the way.

At which point it is probably necessary to zoom out a little. Because what seems to be happening here is that people are confusing the ending – thrilling, admirable and brilliantly executed – with the journey, which with the best will in the world was none of these things. There is a decent team in there, capable of taking the lessons from the last cycle and mounting a strong challenge in Australia in 2027. But only if they learn the right ones.

England reached the semi-finals by beating an extremely poor Argentina, Japan, Chile, Samoa and Fiji. This is not the stuff from which legends are gilded. In large part it was the product of a ludicrously soft draw softened still further by the early elimination of Australia. And for all the drama and gallantry, they still lost against the first elite side they came up against, with a depth of talent on the bench of which English rugby could only dream. So what, exactly, is being celebrated here?

Certainly not the rugby itself. Stylistically, the gulf between England and the very best in the world has rarely been wider. England kicked away 93% of their possession on Saturday night, and spent a total of 73 seconds in the South Africa 22. They registered the slowest ruck speed of the entire tournament (narrowly beating the record mark they set against Samoa). It was the first time at this World Cup that a team played an entire match without registering a single line break.

And hey, it almost worked. But what does it say about England as a rugby nation right now when its only means of inching through a tournament is by presenting as small a target as possible? Should a team this lavishly funded be content to play a game this limited, unambitious, unappealing on the eye? England set themselves the lowest of bars in France and just about cleared it. But if Borthwick is serious when he talks about engaging the public and forging a connection between the team and nation it represents, then he needs to offer something more than grit, hard work and irritation.

This is, perhaps, the insoluble question that has plagued English rugby for a generation. What is the wider purpose of this team? Why is it a good thing for England to win games of rugby? Why should people not currently invested in them invest in them? Why should the talented multi-sport teenager choose this sport over a plethora of others? In short: there has been plenty of talk over the past few weeks from England’s players and staff about what the public have done for them. Now, and over the next four years, what can they do for us?

These are all interlinked problems. A television audience of 8.7 million does not suggest a wider disengagement with the sport. The travelling England hordes I have met in France do not conform to the caricatures often thrown around by fans of other sports. Like the players themselves, they come from all parts of the country and a wide range of backgrounds. So why do so many feel that this team is still not speaking to them?

Partly it is because the sport in England is trapped by commercial forces. One of the most common complaints I came across was that for those not within easy travelling distance of Twickenham, there are very few opportunities to watch the team in action. But with the regional game in crisis, Twickenham and its battery of marked-up hospitality packages also happens to be the Rugby Football Union’s financial lifeline.

Likewise the sport’s traditional overreliance on the private school system, who provided more than half of the England squad at this World Cup. Players like Lewis Ludlam, Ollie Lawrence and Billy Vunipola all began in the state sector before being plucked out of it by private scholarships. How many potential world-class props and how many future ballers ended up slipping through the net? Yet against a backdrop of government neglect and increasing costs, this parasitic and fundamentally inefficient model persists, because nobody really has the imagination to think of anything better.

It’s easy to forget now, but England’s World Cup campaign was launched against a backdrop of empty seats, with over 30,000 tickets left unsold for the defeat against Fiji at Twickenham. This, rather than the 70 inspired minutes they produced on Saturday, is probably a truer measure of where English rugby is right now. So yes, take your pride and your praise, revel in the satisfaction of a job almost done. But the toughest part, you feel, is yet to come.