A year ago — indeed, this weekend of 2007 — the spotlight was on England’s opening game of the World Cup and the opening round of the Guinness Premiership had been delayed for a week. If, therefore, the Premiership clubs spent the rest of the season playing catch-up, they did so to great effect since the domestic final at Twickenham in May, between London Wasps and Leicester, produced the first sell-out crowd in the tournament’s history.

But the first rule of sport, of business, is that everything in the garden cannot possibly be lovely even if it appears so on the surface. Yes, the game in England is in good heart, yes there is an agreement between Premier Rugby Ltd (PRL) and the RFU, which started in July and has breathed a welcome sense of optimism and of confidence that rugby can go forward as a partnership.

But there remains so much more to do, in terms of the facilities at Premiership grounds, capacity to be extended, the season’s structure, which in a year’s time is likely to be revised to include a broader Anglo-Welsh tournament to replace the EDF Energy Cup and to offer something more to England’s second-tier clubs. PRL is all too aware that, after a successful Olympic Games, competition for its share of the marketplace, for support and sponsors, is even more intense.

First things first. The most important achievement this season will be to ensure that the agreement with the RFU works effectively for club and country, the second will be to ensure that attendances recommence their climb after slipping back below the levels achieved in the past three years (see table). There is an easy explanation for the decline: the impact of the World Cup last September and October and the difference in the following of Northampton and Leeds Carnegie.

Although Leeds averaged more than 7,000 in the Premiership, that is still 5,000 short of the numbers who regularly attend at Franklin’s Gardens, most of whom continued to do so even though Northampton were in National League One, helping the Midlands club to record a small profit on 2007-08 in the process. Now the Saints are back, their players and coaching staff are older and wiser and there is a sense of togetherness at the Gardens, which has not always been the case during the professional era.

“It would be nice if, in September, we get good weather, firm grounds and rugby to whet the appetite,” Mark McCafferty, PRL’s chief executive, said. “We want to kick off with a bang, pick up where we left off. We would like to get the European Cup back \, that’s high on the agenda — and last season two of our clubs \ came close, two clubs new to that level of competition.

“From England’s point of view, we want to see them on the winning trail. It’s a tough autumn but I think there’s a renewed sense of optimism and by the end of the calendar year, we should have a good feel for whether we are on the right track.”

It does no harm to PRL’s cause that last month, despite the global recession, it was able to announce a new sponsorship agreement with Hilton Hotels, sustaining rugby’s appeal across a variety of markets.

“There is a real global market for sport and rugby has to continue challenging itself to see that it is healthy at a global level,” McCafferty said. “There are so many sports looking hard at how innovative they can be and how they organise themselves, to have as much pull as possible in as many markets as possible, to make themselves attractive to broadcasters and sponsors.”

Cricket offers the most immediate comparison, with the success of the Twenty20 tournaments, but the southern hemisphere’s rugby leaders are considering the expansion of Super 14 rugby and discovering new territories to conquer, hence the meeting in Hong Kong in November of New Zealand and Australia.

PRL will conduct reviews in mid-season and at the season’s end, both as the umbrella body for the Premiership clubs and in contributing to the new professional game board established with the RFU. “By the end of the season I hope we have something of a public process, whereby the PGB \ says what it wanted to achieve and whether it achieved it,” McCafferty said. “The game has stakeholders and we have to be transparent over our objectives. The game deserves that.”