Gainline.us

Scrum trial sign of Pacific success

A burgeoning tournament for Pacific Ocean A sides includes scrums that maintain front-row contact between the 'touch' and 'set' phases, as the International Rugby Board seeks to remedy serial setpiece collapses.

After referees call touch, props permanently bind their outside arms on one another, theoretically reducing the distance and speed the two packs travel. The approach got started in this past weekend's opening leg of the Pacific Rugby Cup, comprising the second strings for Fiji, Japan, Samoa, and Tonga as well as reserve-grade teams for the Australian and New Zealand Super Rugby franchises.

Now primarily played in the Antipodes, thereby creating a sturdier economic footing, the 6-week, 27-match competition contrasts with the 10-day, 6-game Americas Rugby Championship. While both the PNC and ARC launched in 2006, the former has become a vigorous development competition, and the latter a tepid reprisal of the old Pan American Championship, little more than warmup games for the November international window.

As developing countries have all but abandoned arranging international and 'cross border' competition for themselves, improving on IRB-directed tournaments has become a primary measure of a union's effectiveness. Put another way: What opportunities are Boulder, Richmond Hill [Toronto], and the like creating for elite players that did not exist 5, 10, or 15 years ago?

Infamously, in 2009 Canada expanded its ARC representation to four teams from two, while America saw its share reduced to just one. In 2013, the PNC's expansion to Melbourne and the addition of Japan complements the scrum trial.

For nearly 100 years, forwards around the world managed their own engagements. However sensible the experiment may prove, the current woes were begat by the IRB itself, which in 2007 mandated the now-discarded crouch-touch-pause-engage sequence. As safety measures go, Dublin's efforts to reduce dangerous tackles and concussions have been more productive, with fewer unintended consequences.

'[The trial does] not quite end... the crouch, touch, set nonsense that tends to lead to early engagements or collapses, a free-kick or a penalty, but [goes] some way towards it', London's Guardian opined.

A Salt Lake City-area newspaper and TV station will narrowcast Brigham Young's home matches, the school announced last week. The tie-up is evidence of rugby moving into conventional media at the ground level.

The United States has drawn New Zealand, Canada, and Georgia at the 7s world championship this July in Russia. With the abbreviated game's joining the 2016 Summer Games, the tournament had been declared the last of a six such events; however, with only 12 teams to qualify for Rio de Janeiro, fully half of the 24 World Cup qualifiers will be left out, prompting the IRB to indicate it may reconsider.

Related: Pacific Rugby Cup wins initial praise

On Japan's 2015 World Cup

New Zealand's Rugby News recently published an interesting interview with Japan's new head coach, Australian Eddie Jones. A couple of notable passages:

• I've deliberately left out players [from the first training squad] who have been at previous World Cups and may struggle to be at their best by the time the next World Cup comes around. They still may be the best players in their position in Japan right now, but it's a matter of trying to develop the side, develop the skills, and dtevelop the style of play that's going to take us where we want to go.
• [In 2015] I'm going to need players who have played 30-40 tests who are going to be in that age group of 25-28. You need players who are hardened at the test level and who have won at the test level. [This] Pacific Nations Cup is going to be quite difficult for us, there's no doubt about it because we're going to have quite a young team. But that experience they gain from the tournament is going to be very important.
• Any national team, you want the team to be reflective of your country and your society. You also need the fans behind you.
• I think having won [club championships] and getting to know what makes these players play well well is important. It's like anywhere you go in rugby, really. If you've won your counry's championship prize, or in something like the Super 15, it helps because it shows you know how to win things with your nation's players. I think that's really imporant in terms of giving people confidence going forward.

Jones' views are particularly relevant to the United States in light of the expected re-launch of the Pacific Rim Championship, which would see the 14th-ranked Cherry Blossoms and the 17th-ranked Eagles again meeting on a regular basis.

On the return of semiprofessional rugby

New Zealand's top domestic competition looks to be heading back to a semi-professional footing, another sign the so-called export model may be decreasingly viable for America.

As club and provincial teams in many of rugby's top-tier countries are finding wage bills often outstrip match revenues, a generation of players which has grown accustomed to full-time compensation may increasingly turn to rugby's richer markets: England, France, and Japan. The upshot is 'tier 2' nations such as the USA could have more trouble sending their internationals abroad for everyday training.

After the 2009 collapse of hopes for a domestic pro league, USARFU's Eagle staff sought to place more test players in Europe. But economic trends are running against the possibility of sending hundreds of players abroad, as Argentina did in the last decade.

Ireland recently established a rule that severely limits imported players who are not eligible to represent the country. The move serves to reduce options for southern hemisphere internationals.

In the Shaky Isles, Northland, 1 of 14 teams in the country's provincial championship, has alerted players they should expect to hold day jobs even in season. The union will offer salaries closer to the league minimum of NZ$15,000 ($18,300) than the maximum of NZ$60,000 ($73,000). NZRU chief executive Steve Tew and several provincial executives agree the trend probably will accelerate, Rugby News reported.

The combination of stiffening competition for places abroad and America's now complete lack of domestic representative play increases the stakes riding on USARFU's so-called competitions review, which focuses on amateur senior clubs, as well as USARFU's Eagle 7s contracts, a program comprising less than a dozen athletes.

Todd Clever will retain captaincy of the USA in 2012, new coach Mike Tolkin announced yesterday.

The US Marine Corps is to sponsor USARFU's division 1A college competition, USARFU said last week. The service arm will be present at the semifinals and finals as well as 'select' regular-season games. Details such as term of the agreement or amount of consideration were not announced. The 25-team league kicked off in mid March.

7s key to women's game in IRB paper

The International Rugby Board is counting on 7s to double the number of women players while creating new revenue streams, according to a recently published white paper.

'7s [is] the primary opportunity to grow the game for women and girls, as well as an elite sport in its own right with the Olympic Games as the pinnacle', a team of IRB officials and staff assert.

Such emphasis on the abbreviated game contrasts with Dublin's view of men's rugby, in which the highly profitable World Cup is ne plus ultra.

Yet Olympic 7s proffer immediate governmental and commercial opportunities that haven't materialized for women's 15-a-side. The IRB left women's competition out of its initial proposal to the International Olympic Committee, but has since recognized the leverage of the Summer Games.

By 2013, the IRB intends to introduce a women's 7s World Series with 4 tournaments and 12 so-called core teams. Dublin also hopes to foster age-grade national and regional (e.g., North America and the Caribbean) levels 7s tournaments.

As to the full game, a master international calendar is to be established and global rankings unveiled.

Making a profit on the 2014 women's World Cup would appear to be more urgent. Notwithstanding the focus on 7s, the tournament is to be 'clearly identified as a viable [commercial] product', the paper states. Even as leading unions are noisily claiming the men's World Cup is forcing them into losses, thereby raising the possibility of having to recast business arrangements, a new round of (women's) development initiatives means new costs.

It seems the world body has not quite worked out how to pay for everything. With the 2005 launch of its subsidy program, Dublin trumpeted fairly specific figures that it was 'investing' in unions around the world. The 2011-16 plan notes that Dublin devotes £2 million ($3.1 million) per year to women's development programs, but does not say whether and when the figure will be increased.

Taking a page from the American playbook, the paper suggests women's teams should hold more one-day tournaments. Through the 1980s, 15s tournaments were common in the US as a means of assembling far-flung men's senior clubs, thereby increasing the ratio of competition to travel. For much the same reason, they have been resurgent among school-age teams.

If successful, worldwide playing numbers among 110 unions will reach 400,000 by 2016. The US now counts 22,000 registered players, or 11 percent of the present 200,000. The paper suggests most rugby athletes are adults, while in America about 50 percent are in college. Moreover, US high school players outnumber seniors, as has been true at least since 2005, according to USARFU data.

On representative rugby and the 'hollow frontier'

Why should a national governing body encourage teams and athletes to aspire to elite levels of sport?

The obvious reason is to field better national teams. But does an organization such as USARFU also have an obligation to promote activities that are not in its direct interests? Does it have a practical stake in doing so?

Lee Smith, a renowned rugby thinker who has held posts with both the New Zealand union and the International Rugby Board, recently asserted that one adverse effect of professional rugby is the national union's (and franchise owner's) increased incentive to pursue only those progams which immediately benefit its financial health. In practice, this amounts to the scouting, selecting, training, and monetizing of national teams (or pro clubs).

Smith labels the condition that of a 'hollow frontier' because while the top (i.e., professional levels) look to be advancing, in fact the condition of the settlers -- the recreational clubs which supply players and coaches -- is unstable and may be deteriorating. Links between the top and bottom are severed, and yields diminish.

Smith is primarily thinking of leading unions like New Zealand, but as his experience includes time working in the Pacific Islands, his thoughts are applicable to the developing countries like the United States. The full paper is here. Below, a few of the more interesting passages:

§ Historically the game has been one that depends on mass participation and grassroots involvement. The pyramid goes something like this.

Schools and clubs do what they do best, but when there is a need to have a collective purpose they form a collective body called the local rugby union, to which they send representatives. When they find there are opportunities that they have a collective need for, the rugby unions form a co-operative for that purpose, the national union, and so on up to the world governing body. Each level has its own niche and is responsible for that niche. It is bottom up and not top down. When it is top down you lose support because there is no longer local input to the same degree.

The structure runs into difficulties when each level assumes a role that infringes on those below. In the professional game this has become prevalent especially when it comes to competitions. The effect is to channel money and time away from amateur rugby. This has resulted in the financially weak having less say. This is the vast majority of the people involved in rugby. The effect is to narrow the base of the pyramid making it unstable.

§ What we are looking for is a game for all that supports life-long involvement in a number of roles. It is not a sport with the best playing and the remainder watching. It is part of a healthy lifestyle in which all can find a niche for themselves in a variety of ways that is embedded into the fabric of society and not just one part of it as an entertainment.

§ Rugby has the dilemma of being morally obliged to levels of the game that are a financial cost to run. Some may see this as an investment in many ways. Rugby as part of an ongoing healthy lifestyle is one. With these levels of the game viewed as a cost, rugby has a problem but team owners do not. Their problems are solved by buying in the talent developed by others, frequently, with no return to those who did the developing.

§ [Traditionally] Players from lesser unions within the country could achieve international status. Each union had its niche and potential for a place in the sun. Each could be supported by amateur effort committed to the game as part of their way of life. The game could be measured in a quantifiable sense by the numbers playing but, more importantly, it could be measured by other criteria be they subjective. These criteria were community spirit, camaraderie, loyalty and a code of behavior and ethic that tied the unions together to create the game as part of the national identity.

Obviously the last observation is particularly apropos of the pending disbandment of the college all-star championship. The competition is inefficient and certainly lacks many features of the higher-level All American program. Yet its passing not only feels like narrowing opportunities for collegians at a time when their numbers are growing; but also as if the national union is eliminating one more connection with the folks who provide the players and foot much of the bill.

Smith has some high-level ideas about reconnecting local, regional, and national bodies. Are they applicable to USARFU's formative setup (geographic unions, college conferences, high school states)?

Related: End of college ITTs to wrap up men's rep game

Title sponsor renews backing in British Columbia

British Columbia has won a renewal of title sponsorship for the Canadian province's top senior competition.

The five-year, six-figure agreement with Canadian Direct Insurance 'reflects the caliber of the league, the clubs that organize it, and the teams they run', British Columbia union chief executive Jeff Sauve said in an interview this week. The pact was announced in mid December.

The arrangement is an example of product quality surmounting limited size. From among a provincial population of 4.5 million, the BC union counts just 2,500 senior players and only 6,000 overall. But the Canadian Direct Insurance Premier League featured, at one time or another, all but 3 of the country's 2011 World Cup players and can justly claim to be North America's finest rugby competition, at any level.

The previous agreement ran four years. With the renewal, the union was able to negotiate an increase, Sauve said. CDI, which insures cars and homes, shuns conventional advertising in favor of aligning with community institutions.

Last season saw the province reduce its elite competition to eight teams, down from twelve. The race for the Rounsefell Cup, established in 1922, had been producing too many one-sided matches, prompting organizers to adopt a novel qualification system.

Although British Columbian teams play 15s in both fall and spring, pausing for a short spell in the dead of winter, the province-wide CDI competition is primarily contested after the break. The clubs which produce the Rounsefell Cup contenders account for approximately 40 percent of the province's registered XVs. Like many other Commonwealth countries, lower sides compete in separate divisions, some of which also enjoy title sponsorship.

Related: British Columbia in novel league revamp

HP doesn't drive grassroots, study says

Successful high-performance programs don't lead to increased grassroots participation, contrary to the oft-asserted view, according to an Australian academic study.

The finding is similar to evidence that public subsidies for American sports stadia do not create jobs or other municipal economic benefits. The theory is plausible, but scholars are demonstrating it just doesn't work out that way.

In a analysis of the relationship between gross spending by Australia's equivalent of the US Olympic Committee and Olympic medals won over 1977-96, the Australian Institute of Sport was so efficient that it achieved a 'significant linear relationship', meaning incremental dollars led to more medals. The cost worked out to be $37 million per gold medal, or $8 million per medal.

Neither spending nor performance, however, had any bearing on mass participation. 'It is time to revisit the notion that elite sporting success leads to greater mass participation as a result of the so-called "trickle-down" effect', the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport article summarizes.

USARFU contends it is pursuing a 'top down, bottom up' strategy, so as to encourage both economic and participatory growth. Its test team, which has been slightly worse than the historical average, claims the lion's share of cash goes, while the key grassroots segments of (male) high school and college players have been growing in line with the start of the last decade (on a compound annual basis, these segments grew more slowly from 2006-11 than 2002-05).

If one accepts the view that more players increases the quality of competition and thus the caliber of elites, the study's implication for USARFU is that Boulder will have to spend more on its grassroots programs.

As rugby remains something of an outlier in the sports community -- 7s is to rejoin the Olympics only in 2016 -- and Australia is not the US, the work's applicability to American rugby is uncertain. Still, it covers a wide range of sports which are outside the country's professional mainstream (i.e., Aussie Rules, cricket, or rugby league), and is provocative in that the cost of a medal was greater than USARFU's entire 2010 budget.

Thanks to a Gainline.us reader for forwarding.

Jamey Penca scored in sudden-death overview to lift Life University to a 22-17 win over Central Washington and USARFU's debut college 7s championship. Running Eagle Glen Maricelli scored at the end regulation to knot the match, which saw three ties and the lead change twice.

Life moved past Colorado 27-5 in the quarters and Arkansas St 21-14 in the semis, while Central Washington downed St Mary's 21-17 and then Kutztown 19-17. CW's Tim Stanfill claimed MVP honors.

2011 College 7s Championship: Life Univ. 22 Central Washington 17

Life University
Tries: Cornelius Dirksen, Colton Cariaga, Glen Maricelli, Jamey Penca
Conversion: Colton Cariaga

Central Washington
Tries: Tanner Barnes, Tim Stanfill, Patrick Blair
Conversion: Andrew Nelson

Referee: not available
Attendance: not available

Bear pair in Varsity Match win

First-year graduate students Derek Asbun and Jason Law helped Oxford University to a 28-10 victory over archrival Cambridge yesterday in London, each thereby garnering a 'blue' for competing in the storied 'Varsity Match'.

Of the Americans who have earned this distinction, most were already internationals before appearing in the Twickenham classic, established in 1872.

Just about six years earlier, Asbun and Law lined up against one another in a contest between De La Salle-Jesuit played in Concord, California. Law's Marauders triumphed 28-19, en route to the 2006 high school title, with both backrowers contributing a try and Gainline.us specially observing that Law was 'hard to tackle'.

That fall, the pair appeared in a Cal news release outlining its freshman class, which noted that Asbun had played for past Eagle prop Paul Still at DLS while Law's mentors at Jesuit included Fred and Kirk Khasigian, the national team's unique father-son pairing. (The 2011 release was issued this past week.) Gainline took interest in Bear coach Jack Clark's observation that evaluating players at the school's summer camp, common among American universities, 'has proved more meaningful than a player's individual representative honors'.

Moving along to last May, the pair co-captained Cal's 2011 edition as it forged a national championship, downing BYU 21-14 in one of the season's finest games. Asbun also featured in the summer's All-American side, which bested New Zealand Universities Under 21 two games to one.

The point of sketching Asbun and Law's journey is to demonstrate that elite high schoolers who go on to excel at our top colleges become plenty capable rugby players, by anyone's standards.

Four of 2011's World Cup Eagles spawned from Jesuit: Eric Fry, Colin Hawley, Russ Blaine Scully, and Lou Stanfill. Only the latter, now with 30 caps and a European contract to his name, can yet be considered among the Sacramento school's most distinguished rugby alumni, which includes silver Eagle Kort Schubert and 38-test prop Ray Lehner as well as the Khasigians. Across the country, Xavier High School in New York may yield the next national team coach in Mike Tolken, who coached the backs defense under Eddie O'Sullivan.

Let us immediately drop this pretentious nonsense that 'youth rugby should have been started in the 80s and the 90s', as if there haven't been hundreds of programs on the ground for a decade or more, as if our age-grade coaches are no good at all and our most promising youngsters can't cut it overseas. There can always be more players. National figures, to a greater degree than college coaches, must accept the responsibility of doing more with, and for, the ones we've got.

As to Asbun and Law, they may now hope to join a trio who have gone the 'conventional' route: Bears-Eagles-Dark Blues. Wing Gary Hein, whose intercept try turned the 1990 match in Oxford's favor, and props Don James and Lehner collectively appeared in 74 internationals and 4 World Cups.

Pacific Rugby Cup wins initial praise

Pacific Island teams won or drew each of the weekend's IRB Pacific Rugby Cup matches in Australia, helping validate the tournament's new format.

'A' teams from Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga are playing away games against Super Rugby development sides in Australia and then New Zealand, before heading to Fiji for a final round robin intended to crown the 'core' champion. The 21-game slate has drawn plaudits for addressing both competitive and commercial objectives.

'It has suddenly become a very good development tournament for the PI [Pacific Island] unions, significantly better than before,' said a former director of one of the unions. 'It was clear in 2006 that the Pacific Rugby Cup was costing way too much compared with the benefits received, and that a different format was required. It’s taken five years to change.'

The new approach may offer some hope for the Americas Rugby Championship and representative play in the US.

For international hopefuls, there have been fewer and fewer matches since the board of directors allowed the Inter-Territorial Tournament to lapse. Last fall's ARC squad essentially comprised domestic-based internationals, and preseason Eagle camps -- yet to be scheduled this season -- have become the next step from senior club play.

Like the PRC, the ARC was devised by the IRB as a 'cross border' tournament with start-from-scratch franchises which were to sell minority stakes to commercial investors. Originally called the North American 4, it promptly, predictably ran into any number of problems.

The 2009 edition gained notoriety when Canada's representation expanded to four provinces, while the USA's shrunk to one with Argentina simultaneously joining the fold. (Thus the name change.) Last year the competition moved to Mendoza; however, with the Argentines set to join the Southern hemisphere's SANZAR after the 2011 World Cup, however, the ARC's future is in doubt.

So too is America's test schedule in flux. This summer's Churchill Cup, sited in England, will be the last. Beginning next June, some of Europe's countries are to visit the Americas. But the history of 'Tier 1' nations honoring IRB 'master schedule' commitments in North America is dubious. (At least the Can-Am rivalry is to be resumed. 2010 marked the first break since the series began in 1977.)

Six years after Dublin began its investment program, and five since Kevin Roberts took over promising to professionalize US internationals, American representative play looks to be more uncertain than any other time since rugby went pro in 1995.

Still more irony: The Pacific Island unions, America's former Pacific Rim partners, also are wondering about their test schedule.

'As for the Pacific Nations Cup, it’s now just the three PI teams plus Japan, so not much different to the old days [of the Pacific Rim Championship] before IRB became involved (and took all the rights),' the former director observed. 'Island teams no longer own any home games, and no Northern teams have toured this way since 2003.'

British Columbia in novel league revamp

Canada's leading province has launched an innovative approach to accommodating both semi-professional and recreational teams in regular-season competition.

Last weekend, British Columbia kicked off a 3-division, 22-team format featuring a 5-week 'qualification round', during which 12 XVs hope to earn a place in the 8-team top tier.

Afterward, all 22 competitors will be assigned to divisions based on their initial 5-week records, and teams will only play rivals they didn't face during qualification. Results against same-division teams during the qualification round carry through to the final standings.

The qualification system, which would start anew in 2012, looks to navigate a middle way between yearly promotion and relegation, which hadn't mitigated one-way contests, and a fixed franchise model, which ignores the inevitable peaks and valleys of amateur clubs.

For Americans, it bears watching because the storied western province, home to some 2,500 senior players, is looking to foster more competitive matches for the many serious-minded ruggers who find themselves between the University of Victoria's academy-style environment on the one hand and the second teams of truly recreational outfits on the other.

'What we were finding was that too many blowouts' were occurring in premier league matches with point differentials exceeding 50 points occurring too often, a situation felt to be undesirable for both teams in such contests. Blowouts of this nature were also happening in the province-wide league,' Andrew Spray, president of BC's Vancouver Island subunion, said in an email.

BC is home to the lion's share of Canadian internationals and probably also North America's most advanced commercial environment. The western province has three major seasons: fall, in which clubs compete regionally, within subunions; spring, when they compete in the province-wide leagues; and summer, the representative and 7s season.

BC last restructured its premier league 3 seasons ago. Even if considered unsuccessful, both that revamp and the present initiative display a nimbleness unseen in any American territory.

Each of the teams that qualify for the premier league (called the Canadian Direct Insurance league, or CDI) and the second division (the Okanagan Spring Brewery league) will field second XVs in separate, parallel competitions.

Seattle is competing in the qualification round's Okanagan Spring Brewery division, to determine whether it will be assigned to division 2's Okanagan league or the unnamed third division. The Washington team has historically played its regular season north of the border.