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Here are some of the more memorable stories from the third quarter of the past year, thematically grouped. I'll try to get to succeeding quarters in the next few days, and will look to follow up on these trends in 2011.
High school & college
Senior & representative
Commerce, policy, & administration
Kurt Oeler on 30 December 2010 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Here are some of the more memorable stories from the second quarter of the past year, thematically grouped. I'll try to get to succeeding quarters in the next few days, and will look to follow up on these trends in 2011.
High school & college
Senior & representative
Commerce, policy, & administration
Kurt Oeler on 22 December 2010 | Permalink | Comments (9)
Here are some of the more memorable stories from the first quarter of the past year, thematically grouped. I'll try to get to succeeding quarters in the next few days, and will look to follow up on these trends in 2011.
High school & college
Senior & representative
Commerce, policy, and adminstration
Kurt Oeler on 20 December 2010 | Permalink | Comments (5)
What next for the Churchill Alliance, now that its namesake tournament is slated to end?
While the annual competition aimed to commercialize international rugby in North America, the partnership among Canada, England, and the United States also includes coaching education and technical exchanges.
'We have some referee and coach education in place for 2011. The RFU [England's Rugby Football Union] and the Alliance Agreement will be discussed in the new year along with the Churchill Cup and future relations between North America and the RFU', USARFU chief executive Nigel Melville said in an email.
Aside from knowledge transfer, England remains a potentially valuable partner because it one of the world's most successful rugby businesses. Though its affairs are sometimes stormy, the RFU's performance has generally been shrewd and even visionary.
The Churchill embodies the English view that established unions should partner with emerging countries, a stance that preceded the International Rugby Board's much discussed development program. The tournament provided North American unions with quality matches: domestic content and inventory meant to be monetized.
'I'm not sure we have commercially upheld our end of the bargain. Overtime we've needed to bring more fans and sponsors to the tournaments, reducing the RFU funding, which hasn't happened,' past USARFU national team general manager and business development manager Jack Clark observed in an email.
'Commercially building rugby in new markets is a difficult assignment, but we shouldn't assume entities like the RFU or even the IRB will invest open ended in us without some commercial traction. The Churchill Cup alliance was meant to grow the game in North America, not just to play matches.'
The 2011 Churchill Cup schedule has not been released.
Related: Churchill's end in view
Kurt Oeler on 16 December 2010 | Permalink | Comments (28)
The Super League's Utah expansion breaks new ground by embracing a business-minded franchise.
Because a local real estate entrepreneur sees commercial opportunity, the Utah Warriors are to become the first team to join America's preeminent senior competition without having played a single game. Past expansion has turned more on technical merit and related operating criteria.
After rugby yielded to professionalism in 1995, the 14-year-old league was founded by 14 of the country's leading clubs in burst of enthusiasm for commercialization. But aside from USA 7s parent company American International Media, the game has not attracted outside investors, and RSL outfits have generally depended on well-heeled backers or the players themselves.
''This could be a mold for future expansion,' RSL president Sean Kelly said in an email.
In recent years, the Super League has been contracting as stalwarts such as Belmont Shore and OMBAC have concluded the nationwide competition costs too much. These exits underline that no new money has come into the game, whether from investors or sponsors.
Yet RSL has now succeeded where the North American 4 failed, almost by sheer persistence. The International Rugby Board-managed tournament explicitly aimed to win commercial backing, but has been overhauled several times and was last staged in Argentina.
The Warriors' unorthdox entry has created some anguish, not least in the Denver area, where the municipally run Glendale club has asserted the Barbarians, a rival Denver side, has acted to block its own admission application for fear of losing players. A Barbarians representative told Rugby Magazine the club is primarily concerned with the prospect of two teams in small market.
Warriors managing director Sean Whalen expects 'nearly all' of the team's 30-35 man roster to be players from Utah clubs -- the better to attract local supporters. The players will be unpaid, he added in an interview.
Utah's technical merits, which have been evident at the high school and college levels, figure to be evident soon enough.
The Warriors intend to play their home games in Salt Lake City's Rio Tinto Stadium, a 20,000-seat facility, joining the Barbarians in utilizing a Major League Soccer facility. Rio Tinto staged the successful 2010 high school championships -- which featured a local final -- but was less effective as a venue for the 2008 Uruguay international.
Local organizers have already been trumpeting a March 2011 clash between Brigham Young and the University of Utah, two entrants in the new College Premier League. The 2011 Super League schedule could be released as soon as next week, according to league officials.
Related:
On the rise of Utah
Belmont's RSL exit an economics lesson
Kurt Oeler on 15 December 2010 | Permalink | Comments (36)
Next year looks like the end of the road for the Churchill Cup, and the tournament probably has already staged its last match in North America.
It's 'doubtful' the competition will continue after the 2011 World Cup, according to USARFU officials familiar with Churchill Alliance planning. Additionally, next year's competition will be staged in England, as it was in the 2007 World Cup year.
Created in 2002 by the United States, Canada, and England to develop North America's market for international rugby, the 8-year-old partnership has tried various formats and venues without turning operating profits. England has shouldered the losses from inception, but anticipating a revised International Rugby Board tours schedule after 2011, is now looking to wind down its commitment.
For USARFU, the expected outcome carries significant competitive and commercial implications. Along with the North American 4, the Churchill was a centerpiece of the union's 2006 strategic plan and remains important to its 2009 blueprint for the Eagles.
For the better part of the past 15 years, senior national teamers have played in as many as seven games in late May, June, and July. From 2012, however, USARFU officials expects its June international calendar will comprise two or three games featuring Canada, Europe's 'Tier 1' countries such as Italy, Ireland, and Scotland (stipulated by the IRB master tour schedule), and perhaps some of the 'Tier 2' Pacific nations.
With over half of the fall 2010 Eagle squad based overseas and competing professionally from August to May, and another large group on the World Sevens Series, it may be that a robust summer schedule is less important. USARFU also intends to mount tours to Europe each November, with mainly Tier 2 European opponents.
What of domestic, non-7s players? USARFU's strategic plan calls for developing 'a business plan for an elite men’s professional competition to be played prior to the June/November international player release windows'.
Boulder may also look to schedule matches against professional European teams during their August preseason, as it did against Ireland's Munster and France's Clermont Auvergne in 2007-08. The NA4, since restyled as the Americas Rugby Championship, depends entirely on the IRB and was last month played in Argentina, which is preparing join the Southern hemisphere's Tri Nations. The 'cross border' competition does not look a long-term option.
On the commercial side, for the first time since the Can-Am Series began in 1977, Canada and the United States did not meet in 2010. It appears there's commitment to resuming the rivalry on a yearly basis. Nailing down European opponents is a more fraught proposition, however, as the master schedule is an elusive document and the Europeans owe away matches in June to the Southern hemisphere countries who visit them in November.
European tests are typically marketable in America, more so than biennial matches against Canada or, for that matter, the various 'A' sides which populated the Churchill. But the broader problem is a reliable schedule sufficiently robust to attract a strategic television partner -- the key to USARFU's generating steady revenue from its international program.
Following 7s' inclusion in the Olympics, it also appears to be the case that 15s is less commercially attractive than the abbreviated game, which has made significant broadcasting inroads over the past year.
Holding the 2011 Churchill in England is a faultless decision. England's team management wants to personally evaluate the 'A' side (known as the Saxons), and the event projects greater appeal to the English public -- particularly one that might not travel to New Zealand -- than it does to North Americans.
At the South Africa 7s in George, the USA slumped to a 1-4 record and Shield semifinal loss to Zimbabwe. After 2 tournaments, the 7s Eagles are 9th.
Kurt Oeler on 13 December 2010 | Permalink | Comments (23)
Senior players in one of the country's more prominent regions are gravitating toward recreational divisions.
Northern California's coming season will see 5 new teams in the 16-club 3d division, as well as 3 that dropped down from higher levels. That's 1 less than the combined total of the 7-team 1st and 10-team 2d divisions, according to the union's referee society.
The shift suggests many senior players want to compete they live, not move to established rugby centers, and are turning out to be content with local rivalries, rather than pursuing nationwide competition.
America's troubled economy is undoubtedly an underlying factor: a struggling workforce has less time for quasi-professional pursuits. But straightened times do not engender growth.
In recent years, NorCal has added teams in its northern and southern reaches. This year sees the debut of Colusa, an agricultural town of 5,600 some 70 miles northeast of Sacramento.
NorCal is only 1 of 37 local unions, and fledgling teams typically start at the bottom of the rung. Yet many of the Division 3 competitors are from the region's outskirts and so aren't likely to soon move up to face the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento sides in the first grade.
Up until last year, the proportion of senior teams in lower divisions had also been growing in the southern half of the state, according to a review of Southern California's web site. But the total of senior teams is down from 2010 and 2009, and the more notable trend has been the retreat to Division 1 of Super League stalwarts Belmont Shore and OMBAC as well as Santa Monica.
In the youth sector, the Bay Area will grow to 25 clubs this season, not counting the more established Sacramento region.
Kurt Oeler on 08 December 2010 | Permalink | Comments (10)
The passing of Dan Porter, an innovative, eccentric collegiate and international coach, recalls an era when robust technical knowledge was far less accessible to America's smaller, more fragmented community.
Porter achieved distinction by deriving strategy and tactics from close observation of the game, and explaining his conclusions simply. His star shone brightest in the late 1980s and 1990s, and immediately foreshadowed the USA's early adoption of video and statistical analysis.
A founding member of the University of California at Santa Cruz team, Porter also began his coaching career with the Banana Slugs, before traveling to the Antipodes in the early 1980s. Having returned to UC Santa Cruz, in 1987 he joined Jack Clark's staff at the debut of Collegiate All-American program, initiating a partnership that would see Porter assist Clark also at UC Berkeley in the mid 90s. This was typical: Over his career, Porter sought opportunities to contribute his latest ideas to as many as possible, including several teams at the same time.
Clark and Porter stepped up to the senior national team in 1993, and immediately posted a string of near-miss losses to powerful opponents including Australia (1993), Argentina (1994 and 1996), Ireland (1996), and Wales (1997). Also in 1996 the US helped found the Pacific Rim Championship, which created a broad new set of demands on players and coaches. Not a little of the team's success owed to a distinct approach to the game, if not quite a 'playing style', which had often been missing from previous national XVs. Many of these ideas were concurrently published, by the US Rugby Football Foundation, in an illustrated quarterly entitled the Technical Exchange.
Subsequently Porter moved to Harvard in 1998 before spending 1999-2004 with Ohio State, helping the Buckeyes to the Midwest title. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he moved to New Orleans, pitching in with the New Orleans senior club while working as a contractor.
In his spare time, Porter studied military strategy and war gaming, and his construction skills and war gaming each helped and hindered his approach to rugby. His analytical writings and diagrams were well-suited to playbooks and coaching papers. Preceding the late 1990s introduction of USARFU coaching clinics and published technical materials, they were eagerly consumed. But elite players sometimes found his views esoteric and unpractical, too far removed from the way things actually happen on the playing field.
It is hard now to remember to remember American rugby prior to the Internet's arrival, when simple communication (such as match scheduling) was a great burden. In such an environment, the practical lessons and wisdom of a nationally successful coach, speaking in a native dialect, were a notable phenomenon. The more so because Porter, for economic purposes, was essentially a volunteer.
Memorial services are planned for December 12 in Santa Cruz and January 16 in Columbus, Ohio, where Ohio State is establishing an endowment in his memory.
Kurt Oeler on 06 December 2010 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Wins over Argentina and Zimbabwe today earned the United States a quarterfinals berth at the season-opening Dubai tournament, an encouraging first step toward the 7s Eagles' goal of becoming Cup regulars.
After a first-round, 31-7 loss to New Zealand, Zach Test's pair of tries propelled the Eagles to a 19-0 lead over the Pumas, and captain Matt Hawkins' second-half touchdown proved enough to outlast Argentina's late rally in the pivotal 24-19 win. Then the US strode past from Zimbabwe 28-12, Test and Mile Pulu each scoring their third try of the afternoon.
'We said, if we correct these mistakes [of the New Zealand game], we can beat Argentina,' US coach Al Caravelli told the International Rugby Board's tournament information service.
Consistently finishing among the top eight is Caravelli's aim for the 2010-11 season. 'We want to reach the quarters every time,' he told the IRB.
A year ago the Eagles reached the Cup final in Australia, a first, and finished a best-ever tenth in the Sevens World Series standings. But the US gained the quarters in only two of the eight tour stops and scored tournament points just thrice.
Argentina and Kenya, seventh and eighth, respectively, each advanced to the Cup round five times. Ninth-placed Wales, though just two points ahead of America, reached the quarters thrice but scored on seven of eight tour stops, meaning the Welsh consistently finished strongly on day two.
Tomorrow in the quarters, the US meets defending World Series champ Samoa. Fiji or South Africa looms in the day's second contest. Whether in the Cup or Bowl Plate bracket, a game-two win would send the US through to a finals match.
Kurt Oeler on 03 December 2010 | Permalink | Comments (13)
NBC will broadcast the USA 7s live next Feburary, while another pair of crossover athletes make ready to help the 7s Eagles squad in Dubai build on last year's 10th-place world circuit finish.
'NBC had the privilege of broadcasting the inaugural 2010 Rugby Sevens Collegiate Championship, and is excited to expand its coverage of rugby by bringing the HSBC Sevens World Series to live network television for the first time,' NBC Sports executive vice president Jon Miller said in a prepared statement.
Live rugby on one of America's four TV networks is all but unprecedented. (If memory serves, ESPN broadcast the 1987 World Cup in real time -- in the small hours of the morning, at a stage when cable was far from ubiquitous and the sports channel was more startup than corporate juggernaut.) Many more commercial opportunities become possible by result of electronic media's validating the sport with weekend programming.
The Peacock channel, longtime holder of US broadcast rights to the Olympic Games, is evidently looking to bolster rugby in advance of Rio de Janeiro 2016. Last month NBC announced it would broadcast another year of the collegiate 7s championship, and more international 7s tournaments could eventually make their way to American airwaves, according to people familiar with the matter.
The announcement also underlines that a 'top down' strategy for commercializing rugby requires a broadcast partner. While American International Media, which operates the USA 7s and the Rugby Sevens Collegiate Championship, is placing its events on TV and selling into a burgeoning market for rugby's abbreviated game, USARFU's 15s events lack the same electronic exposure and so are growing tepidly, if at all.
In the Sevens World Series opener this weekend on the Arabian peninsula, Miles Craigwell and Nu'ese Punimata, each with notable football backgrounds, hope their make their debut appearances.
Meanwhile Colin Hawley has replaced Nese Malifa, injured on the 15s tour. The Suniula brothers are expected to take up most of the playing time at flyhalf.
Kyle Marshall, also a gridiron player, is a third newcomer, while Jason Pye is recalled after a year-plus absence.
Last season, Leonard Peters and Tommy Saunders, among others, made rapid strides as the 7s Eagles replaced the Todd Clever-Chris Wyles generation which lifted the US to new heights during the first half of the 2008-09 series. Although it is not the defining factor in commercial success, a competitive squad capable of reaching any given tournament's quarterfinals is no small selling point.
After Dubai, where the US has drawn New Zealand, Argentina, and Zimbabwe, the Matt Hawkins-led squad moves to George, South Africa, to face another difficult pool, with defending series champion Samoa, Fiji, and Namibia.
United States to Dubai and South Africa 7s
Marco Barnard (undeclared), Mark Bokhoven (Denver Barbarians), Miles Craigwell (New York AC), Matt Hawkins (captain, Belmont Shore), Colin Hawley (undeclared), Kyle Marshall (Boston), Mile Pulu (East Palo Alto San Francisco Golden Gate), Nu'ese Punimata (Old Puget Sound Beach), Jason Pye (Provo), Roland Suniula (undeclared), Shalom Suniula (Brisbane), Zach Test (Loughborough Univ.)Related:
Next-gen 7s Eagles know the way forward
Should USARFU prioritize 7s over 15s?
Kurt Oeler on 01 December 2010 | Permalink | Comments (23)
