Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) runner-up Kevin Sinfield has been appointed to run the performance and development department at the Rugby Football League (RFL).

The former England and Leeds Rhinos captain will also oversee the organisation’s commercial, marketing and media teams in his new role as rugby director.

Tasks in Sinfields inbox include leading the review of the RFL Performance Strategy and creating a four-year 2021 World Cup Performance Plan as England bids to host the tournament.

He will also be responsible for leading the review of England’s 2016 Four Nations programme.

Sinfield – who won seven Super League titles and finished second to Andy Murray in the 2015 SPOTY awards last December – said he wanted to help rugby league “achieve great things in the coming years, both domestically and internationally”.

RFL chief executive Nigel Wood added: “The 20 years Kevin has spent as a player at the very highest level of the game will provide us with incredible insight and having spoken to him at length about the opportunity to work with us, I know that he is determined to make as much of a different off the pitch to the sport of rugby league as he did on it.”

Wood said Sinfield’s appointment was “one of a number of significant announcements that we will be making in the coming months”.