The tournament’s Sebastian Coe equivalent is Ian Ritchie, chief executive of the Rugby Football Union, English rugby’s governing body, in charge of making sure the event runs smoothly. “It really will be a festival environment,” he promises.

Such optimism is in sharp contrast to three years ago when Mr Ritchie started work at RFU headquarters in Twickenham, home to its imposing 80,000-seater stadium. He left a plum job — chief executive of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, organiser of Wimbledon — to rescue a governing body riven by infighting, legal wrangles and leaks. The England team had just completed a miserable 2011 World Cup campaign noted for off-field player indiscipline and revelry . “I came at quite an interesting time,” Mr Ritchie recalls with understatement.

Why on earth did he want the job in the first place? The All England Club had been a “fantastic” job for this Yorkshire-born and bred former television executive, he admits. His business acumen had steered it through six years of modernisation — building the centre court’s roof, introducing Hawk-Eye technology for disputed line calls, increasing rights revenues, upgrading facilities and giving women equal prize money to men.

But perhaps it had become too easy. “I didn’t think that I was ever going to leave Wimbledon, frankly,” he says.

His new challenge has been on many fronts: preparing for rugby’s showpiece tournament, modernising the RFU (described by former England captain Will Carling as a body run by “57 old farts”), building a coaching structure capable of producing a winning England team and creating a legacy from hosting the tournament.

On tournament preparations, he largely delegated. Mr Ritchie hired several London 2012 organisers to set up fan zones, recruit volunteers and sell tickets. Up to half a million foreign visitors are expected.

But he has faced accusations of elitism — that rugby is predominantly played by public schoolboys and watched by affluent ex-public schoolboys. Just as Olympic events were oversubscribed, diehard rugby fans have also grumbled about how hard it is getting tickets. Seeing a World Cup match at Twickenham is almost impossible. One game attracted 650,000 applications.

Mr Ritchie rejects the idea that for all his team’s efforts to make the World Cup accessible — with first-round matches at rugby and football grounds around the country — Twickenham remains off-limits to all but the very well off. “I don’t think it is a cauldron for the elite,” he says. Most of the Twickenham tickets for this year’s Six Nations tournament, which begins on Friday when England play Wales in Cardiff, are funnelled through rugby clubs for their supporters, he points out.

But he adds: “The Rugby World Cup’s a different situation, I agree, and you’ve got to have some things at the top end. But, I think, it’s a balance, a bit like the Olympics.” The Rugby World Cup is also different because the RFU had to give World Rugby, the global governing body, an £80m guarantee — to “get the gig”, as Mr Ritchie puts it. “You have to make sure that you deal with that and cover it.” It will also be “a big corporate gig”, he says. A corporate box for England’s crucial first-round clash with Australia costs up to £50,000.

“The money that comes into all this sort of thing goes directly back into the game. This is not going into a shareholder’s pocket,” he says. The RFU will spend £80m this year on grassroots rugby, on projects such as a new clubhouse for a club in Gloucestershire whose changing facilities not so long ago were a horse box with straw on the floor.

Such spending on community projects is important to the RFU. Money is also being spent on getting more state schools playing rugby.

But has he really reformed the governance of a body that seemed on the point of self-destruction just three years ago? “We’re in a good place,” he claims. He recruited three independent directors from business to the RFU board, including Helen Weir, outgoing John Lewis finance director, and Andy Cosslett, Fitness First chief executive.

Mr Ritchie says he has sought to “integrate” the RFU’s activities, from negotiating TV contracts to building community facilities. The RFU Council — the supposed “old farts”that represent the grassroots — is “extremely important”, he says. And on the financial side, the RFU has strengthened.

Money and rugby are strange bedfellows. This is a sport that turned professional only 20 years ago, that prides itself on values such as respect, sportsmanship and discipline, between players and between spectators.

“The great beauty of rugby games is no segregation,” says Mr Ritchie. Aussies, English, Welsh, French sit with each other, “part of the camaraderie of the game”. Large amounts of alcohol are consumed but little unpleasantness ensues. “You want to have a family environment,” he adds.

But to some rugby purists, the RFU has, under Mr Ritchie, taken on a zeal for making money that sits uneasily with rugby’s core values. It employs 640 people. There is a busy commercial department working on maximising income. “I always love it sometimes when you get this ‘oh, the overly commercial RFU’,” says Mr Ritchie. “I don’t see it that way at all. We’re providing a great customer experience.”

There is always plenty of optimism about the legacy benefits of hosting a major sporting event. But it does not always turn out that way, as London 2012 has discovered. Swimming, which saw once-a-week participation among adults in England rise to 2.9m on the back of the Olympics, suffered a fall of 245,000 last year.

Does the RFU stand a better chance of success? Six years ago, there were 230,000 adults in England playing rugby once a week. That dropped to 160,000 in 2013, before getting up to 179,000. Mr Ritchie expects the tournament to boost participation.

“It’s the hardest gig in town to get people playing that regularly in a team sport,” he says. “That’s why this is the best opportunity that we will have.”