Converting a generation

Not yet. Because there's still Jonny Wilkinson to make his feverishlyawaited return and the publication of the New Year's Honours list with the prospect of serious England gongs.

Then, before you know it, as the Cup is being whisked on a 30-stop nationwide tour, we're into the Six Nations, with the world champions going for back-to-back Grand Slams. No wonder Rugby Football Union officials are pinching themselves; they already sense this knock-on effect could run for months longer than they originally imagined.

The question is: how permanent will that effect be? Terry Burwell, the RFU's operations director, is not the only one left wondering whether the moment when Wilkinson kicked that goal was what marketing types like to call the tipping point, the episode which provides a long-term seachange in the image and desirability of a product. Was it the moment that bestowed on rugby the cool, youthful image it had never possessed before?

Burwell has estimated that "10,000 new young participants" - including many girls - would be attracted to the sport because of the World Cup. There can, as yet, be no figures to back this up, but if you pick on the experience of a club like Sutton and Epsom, multiply it by fifteen hundredfold and it starts to look a very conservative guess.

From the moment the club banked £5,000, more than on any other day in their 122-year history, on that historic champagne-fuelled World Cup Final Saturday, the effect there has been dramatic. There have been about 15 new recruits to the senior teams, including some ex-players who'd been inspired to put on boots again.

Yet this was nothing compared with what Surrey RFU coach John Cornford has witnessed in the junior ranks. Of the 45 newcomers who came the other night to Sutton and Epsom, he expects at least half to be wooed back this Sunday morning, joining the steady trickle of kids who've already boosted their minirugby section in the last six weeks. "I've been coaching for seven years and seen nothing like this," he enthused. "It's really quite inspiring, the biggest boost that youth rugby's ever had."

After England reached the 1991 World Cup Final, there was a huge uptake in the sport but Burwell reckons the legacy had burned itself out by 1999. "This time, we have to make sure that the legacy of 2003 endures into 2023," he said.

There are good reasons for thinking it will. Like many, Cornford senses a sport ripe to be democratised because the explosion of interest has been so widespread. In the last four weeks, while doing coaching at comprehensive schools, he's watched kids with absolutely no interest in rugby become hooked.

"It's been great, like watching a whole new world that's opened up to them," he said. "I really think we could see rugby spread into schools and other places which previously had no access to it." Even before the Cup boost, the RFU had made 'social inclusion' projects a priority.

Nobody in their right mind was pretending that rugby could challenge football for popularity. Yet it was, as Martin Johnson shrugged last weekend: "All this 'football, rugby, who's best?' stuff is rubbish - but, hopefully, football people who've seen this tournament will now think, 'I can watch rugby as well'. It doesn't have to be 'either or'."

Quite. A colleague tells me that while watching his lad's undersevens soccer game last weekend, he saw a kid earnestly preparing to take a penalty with his hands clasped in prayer.

Yes, that Jonny may have a lot to answer for. But, as he and his teammates take one more emotional salute tomorrow, it will be just another reminder of how they've given rugby a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity the sport simply can't afford to spurn.