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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.

NZ loss highlights risk in elite player costs

Player medical costs were primarily responsible for the New Zealand union's record loss in 2009, another flashing light for USARFU's high-performance priorities.

The NZRU last year underestimated the cost of injuries to elite players by 270 percent, budgeting NZ$1 million but paying out NZ$3.7 million -- 3.5 percent of its total expenditure. 

Boulder would like to emulate Wellington, which earned 80 percent of its income via the commercial market, in growing through high-profile matches and tournaments that fuel television, equipment, and other sponsorship deals. But the American union has struggled to increase attendance and retain partners such as the National Guard or Sony's Bravia, and instead relies on player dues, mainly from students, to carry the cost of the Eagle program.

Player expenses are an often overlooked part of the equation, and medical costs in America are all but guaranteed to climb steeply in coming years. In response to recent federal legislation, leading public companies such as John Deere and AT&T have already announced billions in writedowns, to account for increased employee costs.

Among the sidelined All Black regulars, including Richie McCaw and Luke McAllister, Ali Williams was twice felled by Achilles tendon problems but remained on the payroll, illustrating the complex nature of payments for salaries, medical care, and replacement players. USARFU does not provide the same level of detail as New Zealand for spending on elite players.

Several times in recent years, USARFU has stated it was on the brink of player agreements. 15s regulars Todd Clever and Chris Wyles were in fact announced as being under contract. But the union pulled back from 15s in January of last year, and has gone quiet on its September 2009 statement that 7s players would be on retainer this season.    

In a related matter, last year's Bledisloe Cup match in Tokyo proved a major lossmaker for the NZRU, responsible for the 'bulk' of a NZ$4.2 million shortfall in 2009's match income, according to the New Zealand Herald.

USARFU's tried and failed to bring the Bledisloe match to Denver, with a bid that would have obligated the union to pay both Australia and New Zealand NZ$2.5 million while netting Boulder just NZ$200,000, in exchange for the responsibility of selling out a 76,000-seat stadium. The endeavor was a personal initiative of chairman Kevin Roberts, who publicly slammed the joint decision by the New Zealand and Australian unions to go to Japan.

Mathematically, the largest proportion of the NZRU's 2009 loss, 40 percent of $NZ15.9 million, was attributed to 2011 World Cup expenses, which the union expects to recoup in coming years.

Related: On USARFU's event strategy

On the economics of European rugby

Today's Financial Times devotes a special section to illuminating the economics of European rugby. Implicitly, it demonstrates why the sports entertainment model isn't well suited to USARFU.

One of the most interesting figures is the Six Nations championship's annual gross revenue. At £220 to £250 million ($330-$375 million), the tournament generates 3 times the cash that the World Cup takes in over a comparable four-year period, according to chairman John Feehan. 

More important: 'A very high percentage of what [the tournament] take[s] in goes straight back out to the [member] unions,' Feehan told the FT, adding that the tournament's cost basis is less than three percent of annual income.

The Six Nations is the primary point of reference for the Eurocentric International Rugby Board, which would like other regional tournaments to obtain greater stature. But US internationals, which do well to break even, absorb far more of USARFU's operating capital, not to mention staff time.

On an individual level, the average salary in England's Premiership is given at £80,000, or $120,000. That compares with 2009's major league baseball minimum of $400,000 or football's minimum of $325,000. Note to college rugby players: Better to get that degree.

Elsewhere, the FT reports that ESPN is planning to extend its College Gameday programming, whereby commentators go on site to college football venues, to the Premiership. So, the broadcast network is extending its model to encompass the leading English brands. NBC's embracing the college 7s concept is the domestic corollary.

The FT spends some time on Argentina and Asia (i.e., Japan and Hong Kong), but betrays little familiarity with the American market. The given number of registered (CIPP) players is about 30 percent too low. That's just as well. Any substantive treatment of the US game needs to come to grips with the sports education model, which cannot be understood by numbers alone.

Coda: The FT fairly sneers at New Zealand's hosting the 2011 World Cup. But not every decision is premised solely on economics, as IRB chief Mike Miller rightly says. Sometimes the best course is what makes sense for the [rugby] community.

4 Canadian, 1 US team in NA4 successor

The North American 4's successor includes four Canadian teams to America's one, while USARFU's 2010 schedule again omits the senior National All-Star Championship.

Canada's entrants in the rejiggered Americas Rugby Championship will play a September round-robin, but the International Rugby Board and USARFU failed to lay out a match schedule for USA 'A', the sole US entrant, or any regional 'high performance' teams that might feed into coach Paul Keeler's outfit.

USARFU executives did not respond to queries.

Billed as a development vehicle and underwritten by Dublin, the 2009 ARC precludes US college students even as our greatest rival appears to enjoy the lions share of funding: America is reduced to one team of inherently older players. Simultaneously, Boulder has quietly written off the country's oldest elite championship, meaning fewer players have a practical chance at reaching the 'A' level, particularly those outside the Super League.

Argentina's Jaguars make up the sixth team, and are to play USA 'A' in an October 10 semifinal, according to previous reports, the same day as two of the four Canadian teams square off. The Canuck contenders are provincial sides Ontario and British Columbia and composite teams Atlantic and Prairies.

Over its three years, the NA4 failed to attract any media, commercial, or fan interest. Played at various times through the spring and summer, the competition was to spawn 'public-private' partnerships with investors, but suffered from fielding synthetic teams with no history and lack of permanent administration able to lay forward-looking plans.

In America, the Falcons and Hawks were often used as de facto national team trials, with the two units sometimes staying in the same hotel and players switching sides from game to game.

The ARC's fall schedule builds into the so-called November international window, and this year would facilitate Eagle preparations for World Cup qualifying matches with Uruguay (as well as a one-off with Fiji, which saw a European match fall through). More generally, November tests are commercially vital to the European powers but have mattered less to America as international rugby typically is a loss-making enterprise.

In its assessment of 2008, USARFU credited itself with launching four HP regions (Pacific, West, Midwest, East) but union officials had not had been able to say much about a competitive program building into the 'A' side. The regions would be very like America's founding four territories, but in another piece of irony, USARFU last year said it was moving away from regionally based high performance officers and academies.

US World Cup media coverage improving

American media is following the World Cup more closely than in past years.

The evidence lies not in features stories about Eagle players and the USA's uphill battle, but in the number of so-called wire service accounts of the knockout rounds, as well as treatment of Rugby World Cup as a business. For example, the New York Times and many other Sunday and Monday papers picked up the results of this weekend's semifinals.

Almost without fail, America's best and most ambitious teams regularly appear in the local sports section, alongside other 'minor' sports like soccer, lacrosse, or tennis. That's important because it demonstrates the sports editor treating rugby as an athletic endeavor, and regularly making decisions about its news value.

By contrast, sports that live by the feature story die by the feature story: mainstream sports with clever storylines as well as 'spot news' inevitably trump the small fry.

Of course, Associated Press-type coverage can lack the detail or nuance that rugby enthusiasts are looking for. In the Internet age that's easily remedied by visiting overseas sites. But the important question is whether rugby is winning new fans Stateside.

Meanwhile, BusinessWeek last month ran a piece sizing up the tournament's commercial sponsorship. It serves to remind that not all audiences are created equal.

Credit-card group Visa International is one of six companies that have shelled out $6.5 million apiece to become top corporate sponsors. Another half-dozen, including Toshiba (6502.T) and Heineken (HEIN.AS), are paying more than $3 million each for second-tier sponsorships. Their backing stands in sharp contrast to the recent meltdown in corporate support for cycling teams (BusinessWeek, 6/7/07) embroiled in doping investigations.

Related: Do-it-yourself media takes root