IT WAS a good day to be at Twickenham. In fact it was a magnificent day for the sport of rugby union as 52,254 supporters gathered from around the British Isles raised in excess of £1.1m for the charity Help for Heroes.

Some of the greatest names of northern hemisphere rugby, names such as Martin Johnson, Lawrence Dallaglio and Scott Gibbs, mingled with their military counterparts, men such as Corporal Angelo Flammia, Squadron Leader Howard Parr and Private Joe Kava. The internationals of recent vintage ran the physical gauntlet by turning out in front of this large crowd. Admittedly it was not the highest standard of rugby Twickenham will see this season, but in no way was this game a soft touch.

The former professional sportsmen wanted to make this match as meaningful as possible for those who played alongside them. This led to a more physical contest than most would have imagined, even if fewer tries than expected were scored.

This was not a half-hearted attempt by the game to raise its image. It was a full-on effort to do its selfless bit for others, which is pretty much guaranteed when the former World Cup-winning captain of England is involved. The name Martin Johnson is iconic enough to lead to populist demand for his appointment as national manager without any experience at any lower level. And how the icon’s selflessness shone through.

The prospect of his 30 minutes or so on the field drew a substantial portion of this crowd to Twickenham, as did the very name Jonah Lomu, who travelled from New Zealand to support the cause – for nothing – only to be deprived of a final Twickenham appearance by an injury late in the week.

There were times during commentary when it felt perhaps a little like a public service broadcast, knowing the hard edge of professional rugby was being played out elsewhere, but by the final whistle I remembered just how much public service broadcasting can give.

This is not a matter of middle-class rugby union smugness but a sense of achievement shared by the players, the fantastic crowd and men like Simon Halliday, who laboured so long and hard to make this match happen.

Union is not a perfect game and Twickenham occasionally has been a little too militaristic for my taste, but on this day the sport got the tone exactly right. In contrast the nation’s national game, football, struggles to unburden itself of a reputation for untrammelled greed on a scale that the tabloids reserve purely for City traders.

Right or wrong, the image of football is a searing one where the global names argue about the paucity of salaries sometimes as parsimonious as £120,000 a week. The sport is flooded with money in a way that rugby can only dream – and in a way that could turn any sport into a nightmare – but the problem for its authorities is the sense of helplessness. While the players argue the game seemingly sits back helplessly.

There are clubs such as Chelsea who are not averse to seriously large charitable donations, but the essence of yesterday at Twickenham was not the million-pound-plus total but the determination of a game to give something back to other than its own people. The Rugby Football Union offered Twickenham gratis, and it should be reiterated that a lot of individuals from different walks of life combined to make this dream of generosity a reality.

At the moment the Football Association could only dream of an event that would bring together so many people from all corners of the country in a spirit of benevolence. The sun shone brightly on an enterprise that casts the game in the best light it has been seen in for some time. There will be rugby watchers who have seen plenty better games but rarely a warmer spirit. The sport’s contribution to the charity is only a start, but it is a good start that reflects well on rugby as a community.

‘Community’ is unfortunately just about the last word we think of when we consider the elite, highflying world of Premier League football. Rugby would never presume to teach football anything, but maybe the round-ball game could quietly absorb yesterday’s lesson from south west London.