Improving American rugby on all levels

[skittles]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Fa'atau82 @ Jan 29 2010, 05:40 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>

Thw way to make Rugby big in the US is get it into JUCO, NAIA and NCAA. There is a massive waste of talent in the US.. players who want to play footy, but are not good enough to go it after NCAA. There is a huge diversity of races scattered all over the states and they could find the Ngwenya's of the world fairly easily if they looked and invested.

As has been said, i don't think clubs are the way in the US, it's normally a franchise or university teams that are very well known. There is absolutely no reason why North Carolina, the Tarheels can't have a rugby side. It's global brand. Every season, thousands of US college basketball players migrate all over the globe to play, they vary in ability massively, but their is no reason why this cannot be tapped into. Realistically, you could convert a footy player into a rugby player in a short time.

There is only the NFL really, there is no other 'big league' and the waste of these athletes is shocking, as they could drop into a club career in countries like spain, japan, italy and of course the US.

Plus the massive plus side with NCAA is that there will be a team season after season, the same core team for 5 seasons or so until they graduate, and can play abroad. Then the next step would be to put into place a test team into the Super 14, or some other pan-pacific competition. There is no reason why you can't have a japanese, fijian, tongan, samoan, argentinian, canadian and american superleague, that'd be a rival to the Super Rugby.[/b]

The problem with just adding rugby to the NCAA, apart from the costs (although I don't see why the football teams need 90 players in their squads, surely you could put 20 of those scholarships into rugby?), is ***le IX, which would force the inclusion of women's rugby as well, which would further elevate costs. It's all money-related. Many universities (including UNC, go Tar Heels!) do have rugby teams, but they're not NCAA-sanctioned. However, the introduction of sevens into the Olympics may see things change.

The younger that they can start getting kids into rugby, the better.

 

[highveldlion]

I am still dreaming of seeing Rugby becoming a premium sport in the USA but, I do no think this will happens anytime soon. First of all, the Superleague is infortunatly not progressing much . At the Dallas Harlequins vs Puget Sound game there were maybe a 100 spectators at the game. The week after while the first side was in Denver playing a superleague game, the reserve played Dartmouth and there were maybe 90 t0 110 persons around the pitch plus 7 dogs. I went after the game across town to watch the second half of the game Dallas Rugby club vs Austin Blacks and there were maybe 150 t0 250 persons around the pitch ( which includes wife, girlfriends, ex players , few expats, by standers who did not know what they were playing . I have been in Dallas 20 years now and nothing has changed. It seems that it is even tougher to recruit players. In the early 90s the Dallas Harlequins ( By far the premium club in Texas and the southwest ) were fielding 3 sides on saturday, today they berely are able to field two sides. And we are talking about a side that plays in the RSL. In the 90s there were a lot more expats like me playing for them. Today, there are fewer expats and more homegrown players ( WHich is a good thing in a sense ). The team trains only twice a week ( tuesday and thursday a night ), sometime on saturday. There is no clubhouse, no weight room facilty, the pitch is in a public park. Win or loose there is no recognition, no media, no cameras. The Dallas Harlequins are by far the best team in terms of character, moral and courage ( I rather go see the Harlequins any day at Glencoe Park than the CowBoys in their palace of luxury ) in the Metrolex and no one cares except very few people.
There is no grass roots movement for rugby in the USA, and that is the problem. High schools football coaches are against the development of rugby in Texas ( they are afraid that their players are going to be hurt ). The universities do not offer scholarships , therefore no one is interested to play rugby in college except few diehard rugby fans or people who want to enjoy the aftergames parties ( Beers and girls ).
Another factor, this is not an American sport and in the USA we want to be world champions ( World series in baseball, The superbowl winner is also called world champion, same with the NBA ... ) .
The USA could be a major force in rugby , afterall look at the astonishing progress of soccer in the USA with the MLS. I can only dream to see Rugby takes of just like soccer. The only difference is that soccer is played all over the country by millions of children and that the fastest growing segment of the population ( hispanics ) is crazy and knowledgable about the game.
For the game of rugby we have to start at the bottom, I mean just like I do, bring bags of balls to public park and start interesting kids in kicking the ball around and play a little bit of touch.

 

[Canadian_Rugger]

The game of rugby is here to stay in Canada, its just never going to be able to compete with other more established sports for some very good reasons...

1. Climate - Canadian climate just sucks for rugby, seriously except for BC you can only play rugby for 5 months, maybe 6 if your lucky. The snow and cold just make the sport unfavourable
2. Demographics -The demographics of this country will not support a sport like rugby, hell the changing demographics have already put a dent in Ice Hockey's numbers and in the next 20 years its going to get even worse. The white population in Canada is in decline, and new immigrants are more interested in playing soccer then rugby, ice hockey, football, or anything else we already have over here. Hell even Cricket is starting to pick up. In the next 20 years recently landed immigrants are going to make up 20% of the Canadian population, rugby being a white-mans sport is going to struggle.
3. Lack of infrastructure - this country has lots of rugby players but lacks good infrastructure, with British Columbia and Newfoundland being the exception (these two provinces are the rugby hotbeds of the country though) Rugby clubs are often found out in the middle of nowhere... take Toronto for instance, the metro area has over 6 million people, if anyone has ever been to Toronto as well its a huge sprawl, over 10 million people live in Southwestern ontario, yet where do they headquarter the Toronto rugby union??? North of Markham!

Fletchers Fields, home of Toronto rugby, is all the way out in Markham... approx an hour drive outside the city centre... most if not all the clubs play their games there and do you think most people are going to want to drive an hour to play rugby... get real, especially when there are so many other possible things you can do.
4. No Grassroots - the skill level in Canada is pathetic, I started playing in grade 10, you would laugh at the skill in our high school rugby, its basically a gigantic rolling maul for 80 mins, nobody even knows how to pass, even at club level the skill is borderline pathetic, you have some guys that are great then there are literally some guys that can't even do a push-pass its pathetic. This is all attributed to the poor club structure in Canada. Most clubs don't put any time into youth programs, as a result the skill level at some clubs has really diminished. The norm at most clubs is you get 20 some year olds walking onto the field who have never even seen a rugby match before... don't get me wrong some clubs have put a lot of time into developing good solid youth programs; however, those are few and far between most clubs prefer to just kick back and relive the glory days (here is looking at you Ottawa rugby)
5. Finally the biggest constraint - SIZE
Canada is a huge ass country, my brother played rugby in Australia for 2 years in Mt. Isa (Go Warrigals) ... Mt. Isa is a shithole in the middle of nowhere with like 20,000 people they had 4 clubs... my city Kingston ON, has 1 club... there are a 150,000 people in Kingston we had 2 sides and a junior side... you wanna go somewhere we had to travel an hour each direction for a game.... now contemplate having to do that on a national scale... clubs just don't have the money, ... their are rugby hotbeds in Canada, they are located on the coasts, and in certain backwood areas, but trying to unite these areas is damn near impossible. People say, hey you guys should follow Argentina's lead... how you could fit the entire country into one of our provinces, the scale doesn't make sense.

The best I can see for Canada is maintaining the status quo... it will be awhile before we can play with the big boys

 

[Charles]

. People say, hey you guys should follow Argentina's lead... how you could fit the entire country into one of our provinces, the scale doesn't make sense.

Good post overall but you might want to look at a map about this...

 

[Canadian_Rugger]

Good post overall but you might want to look at a map about this...

Good post overall but you might want to look at a map about this...

Argentina = 2,766,890 km a big country yes... 8th largest in the world; however,

Canada = 9,984,670 km 4 times the size of Argentina... so yes the scale is quite different but these numbers can be deceiving...

So for this I have highlighted a population density map

Lets look at Argentina



On the map I have highlighted in pink the major population centers within Argentina... the red dot indicates Buenos Aires where almost a 3rd of the Argentinian population lives.... the green line indicate the predominant rugby provinces in Argentina.

Now lets look at distance between the rugby playing population... to drive from Buenos Aires to Rosario it takes 3 hours approx 300 km away... drive from their to Cordoba its around 4 hours approx 400km away... thats 700km and you have just hit approx 80% of the rugby playing population of Argentina... add Tucuman into the mix and it would take approximately 1200km from Buenos Aires to Tucuman... Argentina has approx 91,000 registered players within a 1200km distance of each other.

But what about Canada... I will put a map to compare the population dynamic of Canada and Argentina with a specific focus on the rugby playing dynamic



This map illustrates the different pprovinces of Canada... The Black parts of the map are rugby hotbeds, where rugby is played... The coloured squares illustrate the different Canadian rugby regions (British Columbia, Western Canada, Ontario, Atlantic/Quebec)... the lines illustrate distances between the regions.

From Vancouver to Edmonton its approx 1200km away if you drive... thats around 13 hours taking into consideration the road conditions, from Edmonton to Toronto its 3500km away if you drove continuously it would take you approx 2 days to get there ... realistically driving would take around a week... from Toronto to Newfoundland its another 3000km, driving would take approx 2 days, realistically around 5 days.

In total to cross the country from our rugby hotbeds of Vancouver/Victoria, Calgary/Edmonton, Southern Ontario, Atlantic Canada/Newfoundland the distance is approx 8000km... driving 10 hours a day that would take around a week and a bit to cross the entire country

But what about the rugby playing demographic ... Canada has around 23,000 registered players

if we do a population density calculation

Argentina's rugby playing density is

Approx 0.033 players per square km

Canada on the other hand has a rugby pop density of 0.002 players per square km

A very substantial difference, for these reasons I really think my argument that the scales of Argentina and Canada are entirely different. You could also make the argument that American rugby has the same problem that Canada does. So what should we do?

One thing that has never been suggested, and I don't know why, is bringing the American and Canadian systems closer together, Canada needs to get American teams into the ARC...

People are talking about bringing in other South American teams into the ARC, which I think is a stupid idea, travel costs are already crazy enough as is, ARC should be left as an North American competition, the whole point of the original competition was to bring professional rugby to Canada and the US through the NA4. Rugby in North America needs consolidation not adding more distance to an already overstretched system.

We don't even have a national club championship in Canada as costs for clubs is too prohibitive.

Argentina and North America are totally different and the Geraint Johns, Eddie O'Sullivans, Scott Johnson's who think they know North American rugby and what would work are full of crap

 

[TRF_Olyy]

It's like a geography lesson in here!

 

[Canadian_Rugger]

It's like a geography lesson in here!

Lol I have absolutely nothing to do today and was bored

 

[Charles]

Thank you for the post. maybe I misunderstood your first post but I thought you were saying that Argentina would fit into a single Canadian province, which is obviously wrong, as you would know since you appear to be pretty knowledgeable on the subject.

 

[Canadian_Rugger]

Thank you for the post. maybe I misunderstood your first post but I thought you were saying that Argentina would fit into a single Canadian province, which is obviously wrong, as you would know since you appear to be pretty knowledgeable on the subject.

I am sorry, I should of clarified what I meant, I know Argentina is a fairly large country its just that well Canada is on a whole other level, and Argentina's population is heavily concentrated in a few key provinces

 

[highveldlion]

Also remember that Rugby in Argentina is mainly played in the Buenos Aires-Mar Del Plata area. Tu vois Frenchman il y a quelque differences entre le rugby Canadien et le rugby de nos amis Argentins.

 

[Charles]

Also remember that Rugby in Argentina is mainly played in the Buenos Aires-Mar Del Plata area. Tu vois Frenchman il y a quelque differences entre le rugby Canadien et le rugby de nos amis Argentins.

No offense meant Highveldlion, I know Argnetinian and NA RUgby are quite different. Argentines are good, for a start...More seriously as people have already written on this thread, it has to start at the grassroots level, with kids.

 

[highveldlion]

Pas de probleme mon ami , and I agree with you 100 % it has to start at the grassroot level which I am trying to do on a daily basis here in Dallas and like you say in French putain ce n'est pas facile.

 

[Phil_Mc_90]

I think a great shout would be a league with teams from USA Canada and maybe Argentina, build domestically and then the international team would follow eventually