What counts is how the money is spent

IT WAS a close-run thing but, after crunching the numbers harder than a caffeine-fuelled psephologist on election night, we can now predict the following with a high degree of confidence: there is more chance of Dan Cole outperforming Simone Biles on the uneven bars than of a badged and blazered rugger chap from some swanky corner of the shires erasing the word "Twickenham" from his vocabulary.

The movers and shakers at the Rugby Football Union can rebrand Twickers in whatever way they like - as they just have, funnily enough - but away from the committee rooms and hospitality boxes, the old cabbage patch will never be known as the "Allianz Stadium" by the masses at the turnstiles.

You might as well ask people to speak of Wimbledon as the "Pimms Championship", or refer to the Old Bailey as the "G4S Central Court of England and Wales", or swear allegiance to the "Horse and Hound Royal Family".

Which is not to say the sponsorship deal announced last week was anything other than inevitable.

Rugby in England needs money and Allianz, ranked in some listings as the largest insurance company in the world, has oodles of it. And while the RFU has spent most of the professional era banging on about Twickenham being the spiritual home of the game - its holy of holies, its sacred place - even religions have their price. Modern-day America tells us that much.

For every follower of the union code who despairs at the idea of soul-selling for commercial benefit, there is another who has even less liking for sporting penury What's more, it is perfectly possible and entirely legitimate to hold both thoughts at the same time.