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Alas Zizou!

opinion With due consideration for Italy, deserving winners, soccer’s 2006 World Cup final today seems terribly sad.

For the second time in the last four occasions, the championship was decided by spot kicks. Yesterday the Italians defeated France 5-3 by means of that most unsatisfying mechanism; in 1994 Brazil downed the Azzurri 3-2 after a scoreless 120 minutes.

The Berlin final also underlined that the difficulty of scoring encourages world-class athletes to gull referees into awarding penalties. France’s only goal seemingly resulted from a midfielder Florent Malouda’s prudent tumble, so common an occurrence that it is actually a yellow-card offense for players to “dive” when within 18 yards or so of the goalmouth.

Rugby is fortunate to have a different kind of penalty goal. The three-pointer is neither so predictable as the spot kick nor worth the same value as our main scoring play, the try. Then too, penalty kicks reward initiative and pressure created by any player, not simply the ballcarrier.

Most of all, it is heartbreaking that French captain Zinédine Zidane, the best player of his generation, succumbed to the game’s dour pressure in headbutting defender Marco Materazzi.

World championships ought to encourage virtuoso performances, not tawdry acts. Yet as the Scotsman’s Jonathan Coates commented: “The line between genius and madness has perhaps never been thinner.”

Zizou assuredly deserved his dismissal, though the officials’ use of instant replay may have been irregular. Let us hope the International Rugby Board is alert to the technology’s ramifications for our game.

Zizou alas et adieu! And with some irony, the sporting world’s attention now shifts to the World Cup of soccer’s descendant, in hopes of a better final next year in France.

Related:
    A star falters, France fades, Italy rejoices (New York Times)
    Video replay killed the World Cup star Zidane (Scotsman)
    End of Zidane's world (Times of London)
 

On American rugby's values; who's in charge?

opinion If USA Rugby’s national office has treated volunteers poorly, few examples compare with this: interim director of rugby Alan Solomons yesterday fired a long-serving part-time employee over the phone, while the man was at a hospital attending to his young daughter’s chemotherapy.

American rugby is made up of men like Mike Strain who set aside work, school, and family to play the game and later serve as officials. Whatever we may hope to become, these things must always come first. In yesterday’s instance, no business imperative would have overridden the courtesy of a short delay.

Who is supervising the author of such a graceless deed? Is it the International Rugby Board’s Steve Griffiths, seconded to the USA as interim chief operating officer? Or the union’s Executive committee, comprising chair Bob Latham, vice chair Frank Merrill, secretary Dave Pelton, and treasurer Tom Schmitt?

The issue is underlined by questions surrounding the employment status and compensation of Messrs Solomons and Griffiths, as well as interim national team coach Peter Thorburn. Based on the union’s past experience and in the view of people familiar with obtaining work permits in the United States, it is unlikely that USA Rugby obtained clearance in the two and one-half weeks between the announcement of chief executive Doug Arnot’s departure and Mr. Griffiths’ arrival.

Mr. Griffiths, an employee of the IRB, is not being paid by Boulder, according to an individual familiar with the matter. If, as has been suggested, his colleagues too are being compensated by Dublin, using IRB grant monies earmarked for USA Rugby, then it raises the issue of whether Mr. Latham has ceded significant control to individuals with conflicting loyalties (not to mention apparently little regard for basic sensibilities).

USA Rugby could also face legal scrutiny regarding unconfirmed reports that Mr. Solomons has threatened players unavailable for the Churchill Cup due to work and family commitments that they would “never again play for the USA”; and that the union did not consult international athletes in choosing Mr. Thorburn to replace Tom Billups. In keeping with US Olympic Committee guidelines, senior players participated in naming of the previous two Eagle coaches.

If such reports are accurate, the players would appear to have a legitimate reason to approach the USOC Ombudsman, according to one USA Rugby Board member.

Most important, long after Mr. Solomons has returned to South Africa, where he is reportedly to take a position with the University of Cape Town later this year, departed, American rugby will continue to rely on individuals such as Mr. Strain. Ironically, the well-performed events manager is a graduate of Santa Clara University, site of the Churchill Cup, and a long-time official of the Northern California union.

Mr. Strain’s club, the Olympic Club, has already staged a fundraiser in support of his family, so it would seem the local community understands what USA Rugby does not. Godspeed.

Missing the forest for the trees

opinion America’s leadership cadre still doesn’t understand that its two-year dalliance with the USA 7s was a debacle, a misconception endorsed by the union’s business partner, Rugby Magazine.

Buzz McClain, the referee delegate to the Board’s Executive committee in 2004 and 2005, contends in the monthly’s current issue that the Los Angeles event hasn’t been “a trip to the poorhouse.” The 7s was precisely that, and it is emblematic of management’s failure that it cannot bring itself to say so.

The USA 7s lost a total of $700,000 in 2004 and 2005, chief executive Doug Arnot wrote in a September 2005 email to former director Don James. Probably more: it is known that National Team and referee accounts were consigned 7s event costs.

In 2003, a World Cup year when unions traditionally overspend, USA Rugby made a loss of $164,000 and ended the year with net assets of $165,000, according to the union’s IRS filing. In 2004, the first year of the 7s and the last for which returns are available, the union lost $340,000 and swung to a year-end deficit of $175,000.

USA Rugby was insolvent at least once in 2005, according to another director, and only the early arrival of an IRB grant kept the union from dipping into the red again in December, the Board learned earlier this month.

Unable to support continuing losses, Mr. Arnot sold the tournament last fall.

Proceeds were insufficient to restore the now-extinguished reserve, or even to balance the 2006 budget. Even under the presumption that Mr. Arnot will achieve a fundraising target of $650,000 – the immediate past treasurer evidently thinks he will not – it was still necessary for Mr. McClain’s erstwhile colleagues to raise dues by 40 percent and more. Most of the projected $850,000 in revenue was needed to cover operating costs.

Mr. Arnot this month told the Board he has secured “one third” of his fundraising goal, before retreating under questioning to just $50,000. Ostensibly received for the sale for advertising on the national jersey at the USA 7s, that money too is in doubt: the inventory was part of the event’s sale price, and that there was no such money in the union’s accounts at the time of the meeting, according to individuals familiar with the matter.

Which brings us back to Mr. McClain. While ducking responsibility for USA Rugby’s financial peril – to be fair, the affable Virginian is not alone in that respect – he scents scandal in the identity of the 7s jersey advertiser. (It was Mr. McClain’s publisher, Rugby Magazine, which also promotes USA Rugby marketing content in its pages, a byproduct of the event sale.)

Naïve, disingenuous, or worse? The kindest thing that can be said is the Board and its fellow travelers are evading the consequences of the USA 7s and consigning future generations to bear the cost.

Wanted: vision and vigor

opinion Why play rugby? What are the American game’s principal strengths? Where are we heading, and how will we get there?

To lead with vision and vigor, USA Rugby ought to have simple answers and dramatic plans. Unfortunately its Vision Paper, the public’s first look at the work of a special Board committee on governance and strategy, presents homogenized goals, devoid of any Yankee ingenuity or even reference to America’s unique sports environment.

The paper’s mission statement lacks any sense of our game’s animating spirit. The Declaration of Independence boldly asserted that “all men are created equal,” before vowing to break away from the world’s greatest power. USA Rugby takes as its purpose to “lead the growth and development of all aspects of community and high-performance rugby.”

Tepid. The white paper also offers little sense of context and therefore no feeling of urgency. Reacting to the Soviets’ launching cosmonaut Yuri Gregarian into outer space, President Kennedy proposed to send a man to the moon by decade’s end. USA Rugby’s Vision Paper neither references the disruptive change caused by professionalization in Europe and the Antipodes, nor says when it will address the plight of the American amateur.

As building pipelines to the mainstream of athletes and sports know-how is America’s quickest route to lasting progress, so addressing the rugby athlete’s career path is our most fundamental development problem. That USA Rugby's directors have delivered so little is discouraging. Let’s hope the next version is more compelling, and soon.

Pay your dues

opinion In the weeks since the Board of Directors raised dues, the move’s defenders haven’t been particularly convincing. As Paul Mabry acknowledged, “we have lots of ‘splaining’ to do.”

Yes, you do.

The problem is not that dues went up after eight years. Nor is there much complaint about where the money’s going. It’s that USA Rugby didn’t have much choice in the matter because its coffers are empty, and its first move to get out of the mess was to dun its members.

Two years ago the Board placed a bet on the USA 7s, gambling that a stop on the IRB’s World Sevens Series would become a profitable business. The Los Angeles event lost money its first year, as startups do. 2005 was to be a break-even year, but produced a loss comparable to year one.

Also in the past two years, USA Rugby made substantial losses on the France and Wales internationals staged at Hartford’s Rentschler Stadium. In all, the union lost a reported $1 million, entirely consuming its reserve.

What were the chief causes of these losses? What mid-course corrections were made? Who is responsible?

In 2004 the 7s was up against the NBA All-Star Game, and it rained during the buildup to the 2005 event, the Board was told at its November meeting. Were these factors more important than USA Rugby’s inability to negotiate affordable terms with the IRB for the tournament license or with Home Depot on rent, concessions, or parking?

Probably not. Ineffective event marketing and expensive tickets also are likely suspects, and much the same can be said of Rentschler.

The catastrophic losses forced USA Rugby to face up to how it would meet operating costs in 2006. Selling the final year of the 7s license to John Prusmack, minority owner of Rugby Magazine, takes the cost off the books and recoups some cash, but does not mean the initiative was well run. Dublin’s underwriting the Churchill Cup also is a lifeline, though the National Team still requires operating monies that the union does not now have, if it's to play in the World Cup qualifiers.

Was raising dues justifiable? Yes, both because the market probably will bear higher prices and because the union is under significant IRB pressure to invest in test rugby. But does anyone believe the Board is really behind the National Team, or that it feels the members' pain?