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Maturation evident in charity event

Pink Jersey, Pink Tie organizers are hoping next weekend's Olympic Club-San Francisco Golden Gate charity match and auction will generate the equivalent of a full season's expenditure for many American teams.

'In 2009, the first year this event took place, we were able to raise over $16,000 for the KAM [Kathleen Ann McClenahan] Foundation. This year we ... hope to raise over $20,000,' executive director Nick Polsky said in a prepared statement. KAM provides services for breast cancer patients and their families.

The benefit can be seen as evidence that maturing rugby teams are taking on civic roles common among America's mainstream sports. In addition to raising a sum that would be the envy of many hand-to-mouth clubs -- particularly amid economic doldrums that have traditionally hit the sport hard -- the initiative shows San Francisco's elite at work on behalf of a so-called women's issue.

SFGG, which is hosting the March 6 game at its estimable Treasure Island facility, also stages a Thanksgiving fixture to help prevent teenage suicide, inspired by the loss of a high school player. Across country, the New York Athletic Club holds an annual game to honor players, many of them in public services, victimized by the September 11 terrorist attack.

For more and more teams, as philanthropy becomes part of their repetoire, so their overall organizational capacity increases.

The Pink Jersey, Pink Tie game derives revenue from match attendance, expected to rival or exceed Super League games because the game is a cross-town rivalry, as well as a postmatch reception and auction at one of the city's better hotels. Reception tickets are available at www.pinkjerseypinktie.org.

Univ. of California 39 Univ. of British Columbia 7 (halftime: Cal 24-0)

(Berkeley, California) This was no ordinary 5 tries-to-1 mismatch.

Cal yesterday humbled the University of British Columbia 39-7 through a direct, physical approach that rattled the normally formidable visitors. 

Keegan Engelbrecht's precise aerial game plus 7-of-8 goalkicking also played a significant role in a contest the Bears never allowed to become close. Given the long, even history of the World Cup series as well as the Thunderbirds' habituation to BC's Canadian Direct Insurance Premier League, our neighbor's top senior competition, the success of Cal's approach was striking.

Tries in the opening 10 minutes from brothers Danny and Neill Barrett, made possible by the midfield attack of Sean Gallinger and Colin Hawley as well as Engelbrecht's tactical boot, set the stage. But flanker Tom Rooke's one-on-one goalline stop and wing Blaine Scully's ball-jarring tryline collision, on either side of the 25-minute mark, prevented UBC from climbing back into the game.

Engelbrecht then slotted a short penalty goal and the estimable Rooke sold a dummy to ground a 7-pointer, earning Cal a 24-0 lead after 36 minutes. Once more UBC threatened but again knocked on going over the line, the would-be scorer showing the nerves of a replacement, elusive fullback Sean Ferguson having retired following a punishing meeting with a Bear backrower.

In the second period, Engelbrecht added a three-pointer while UBC missed two penalty goal chances; the Bears then sandwiched fourth-quarter tries from Dustin Muhn and Gallinger around the 80th-minute goal of Jon Anthony, who scored here a year ago.

With an injury roll including captain Ben and flyhalf Harry Jones, both BC provincial players, the Tbirds started five freshman and managed little continuity. (Yesterday Charley, the third brother, was felled by apparently serious ankle damage.) Yet the experience of Cal's senior-dominated lineup was less prominent than a kind of blood-in-the-mouth aggression, suggesting last year's national championship loss to Brigham Young, in which the Bears surrendered a halftime lead, has not settled well in Berkeley.

Then too, yesterday's contest looks to have been Witter Rugby Field's penultimate match before nearby Memorial Stadium's multiyear renovation, which will dislodge the rugby team from its enclave of partisans. Next month's homecoming match, against a St. Mary's side that startled Cal a year ago in Moraga, looms as a final, emotional chapter.

BYU, on hand to scout yesterday's game, this Saturday faces 2009 Super League semifinalist Denver Barbarians in a neutral-site fixture. With Cal and the Cougars having contested the collegiate final each of the past four seasons, the club-college game could be another milestone en route to Palo Alto.

Univ. of California 39 Univ. of British Columbia 7 (halftime: Cal 24-0)

Univ. of California
Tries: Danny Barrett, Neill Barrett, Tom Rooke, Dustin Muhn, Sean Gallinger
Conversions: Keegan Engelbrecht (4)
Penalty goals: Keegan Engelbrecht (2)

Univ. of British Columbia
Tries: Jon Anthony
Conversion: Connor Fuller

Referee: Pete Smith (Pacific Coast)
Attendance: 1,100 (estimated) 

Related: 2009: Univ. of California 31 Univ. of British Columbia 15 (halftime: Cal 11-8)

Two Churchill tests likely; RSL final unclear

Two thirds of the 2010 Churchill Cup competitors will be full international sides, meaning the US could well play two tests during the three-game June slate.

The Eagles have drawn Russia and England's Saxons in the pool round, and will face one of Canada, France 'A', or Uruguay as part of a finals tripleheader. 14th-ranked Canada and 16th-ranked Russia sit higher in the IRB's standings than the 18th-placed US, demoted last week, while Uruguay is 20th following a pair of fall 2009 defeats to the Eagles.

There is room to debate whether full tests or 'A' matches are better long-term preparation for the 2011 World Cup. But the tournament's drawing power has surely receded from 2006-08, when it featured Ireland 'A' and Scotland 'A' -- in effect, half of the Six Nations reserve teams -- as well as either the New Zealand Maori or the Argentina Jaguars.

The Jaguars and Ireland 'A' also appeared a year ago, with the Irish winning the title. Thus 2010 will be only the second time in eight years that the defending champion does not compete.

As in 2009, the nine-match tournament will be contested solely in America. The championship will staged in a Major League Soccer venue near Newark, New Jersey, while the prelims are to be played in the Denver area's Infinity Stadium. Neither facility existed when the tournament kicked off in 2003.

At present, America's Rugby Super League final is scheduled for Infinity on Friday, June 4, the night before Canada meets Uruguay and the US tackles Russia. But national team management is pushing for the game to be moved up a week so Eagle squad players and staff won't have to choose between club and country commitments.

In response, RSL officials have asked USARFU to at least make the league whole for short-notice travel on a major holiday. There also are questions about TV broadcasting and staging the club final in Denver.

The Division 1, 2, and 3 finals too are scheduled for the same weekend as the Churchill's opener. Absent USARFU's committing to compensating travel costs, the union's December request to bring these championships forward was soundly rebuffed.

On sports education vs. sports entertainment

Sometime in 2007, possibly with the passing of Dennis Storer, I began writing about the 'varsity model' as a comprehensive approach to improving rugby in America. A bit later, I started identifying the 'Commonwealth' mindset as an alternate worldview.

As a means for understanding our quest to grow and strengthen the sport, the dichotomy of varsity and Commonwealth is more effective than any other framework. It is particularly useful in that USARFU neither is democratic nor deliberates in public, and so its compulsory members have few reference points for assessing the governing body's decisions and performance.

But the varsity-Commonwealth construct has shortcomings too. Mistakenly, some will always insist on viewing varsity as a formal status, rather than a state of mind. Meanwhile, the term Commonwealth has the unfortunate effect of seeming to lump bona fide immigrants, such as Storer, in with carpetbaggers and natives beset by a colonial mentality.

Earlier this month, in considering chief executive Nigel Melville's role as director of a for-profit 7s corporation whose objectives conflict with those of non-profit USARFU, a clearer framework came into view. The two predominant views of developing of American rugby use as their touchstones the sports education system (i.e., the varsity model) and the sports entertainment industry (the Commonwealth view), respectively.

Both of these are the world's most advanced systems of their kind, and they overlap. The implications of following one versus the other are dramatically different, however, and are worth elaborating at length. But let us begin with an important thought about development itself, from business sage Peter Drucker's Ecological Condition: Reflections on the American Condition:

Management creates economic and social development. Economic and social development is the result of management. It can be said, without too much oversimplification, that there are no 'underdeveloped countries'. There are only 'undermanaged' ones. Japan a hundred and forty years ago was an underdeveloped country by every material measurement. But it very quickly produced management of great competence, indeed, of excellence.

This means that management is the prime mover and that development is a consequence. All our experience in economic development proves this. Wherever we have only capital, we have not achieved development. In the few cases where we have been able to generate management energies, we have generated rapid development. Development, in other words, is a matter of human energies rather than of economic wealth. And the generation and direction of human energies is the task of management.

Roster building highlight of 7s weekend

The roster, not the venue, was the main thing at the past weekend's USA 7s tournament.

Sunday's 28-17 bowl championship over France, on top of a 19-14 Argentine victory, may one day be seen as a coming of age for Kevin Swiryn's crew. Broadly changed from the high watermark a year ago in San Diego, the 2009-10 edition for the first time demonstrated it can sustain America's 'core' status on the World Sevens Series.

The Eagles had since failed to score in eight consecutive tournaments, raising the question whether coach Al Caravelli could identify and train a new generation to succeed the one headlined by Chris Wyles, Todd Clever, Jone Naqica, and Takudzwa Ngwenya. With many Americans setting great store by seven-a-side's inclusion in the Olympics, the import of the matter is the difference between starting over and building momentum toward the 2016 Rio de Janeiro games -- which tentatively plans to include only 12 teams.

The 'developed' rugby world has fastened on the presence of Leonard Peters and Bennie Brazell, a pair of college football standouts with some NFL experience. But the story lies more in the role of players like captain Swiryn, whose second season on the 7s circuit has been limited by injury, Matt Hawkins, and Nese Malifa as well as the contributions of newcomers like Nick Edwards and Zach Test.

Like recent 15s squads, the current 7s team features any number of players recruited from overseas, and is light on home-grown high school and college players, Swiryn and Test being the outstanding exceptions. But Caravelli's scouting materially differs from his 15s contemporaries, Peter Thorburn and Scott Johnson, in that the 7s mentor has consistently filled his camps with genuinely new names and faces, has not automatically advanced players trained overseas, nor expected that the players in camp were the finished product.

(The selections of Eddie O'Sullivan, another who has had little time for the likes of Gavin DeBartolo, cannot be fully assessed until his second year commences later this spring. In an interview with the IRB, however, O'Sullivan noted that 'there probably be 9 or 10 of [this weekend's players] in the 15s pool.')

With four events to go, the US trails Canada by 2 points, a worrying prospect since Canada was until recently North America's core member and the criteria for the 2010-11 season have not been published. In closed-door proceeding, Rugby Canada has been running rings around USARFU, most recently in 2009's notorious four-teams-to-one Americas Rugby Championships. Still, two quarterfinal berths from the Australia, Hong Kong, England, and Scotland tournaments should do the trick.

In a related matter, talk that USARFU would utilize Las Vegas as the venue for announcing 7s players contracts proved idle. Last September, chief executive Nigel Melville said he expected the union would employ its frontline players this current season.

2010 United States to USA 7s (4-2, Bowl champs)
Marco Barnard (Kutztown Univ.), Bennie Brazell (unattached), Nick Edwards (New York AC),  Paul Emerick (Overmach Parma), Matt Hawkins (Belmont Shore), Valenese Malifa (Belmont Shore), Leonard Peters (Gentlemen of Aspen), Thretton Palamo (San Francisco Golden Gate), Mile Pulu (San Francisco Golden Gate), Shalom Suniula (Pearl City), Kevin Swiryn (captain, Old Puget Sound Beach), Zack Test (Loughborough Univ.)

2009 United States to USA 7s (3-2, Cup semifinalists)
Justin Boyd (Dallas), James Gillenwater (Belmont Shore), Paul Emerick (Overmach Parma), Matthew Hawkins (OMBAC), Valenese Malifa (Belmont Shore), Jone Naqica (Denver Barbarians), Thretton Palamo (Biarritz), Rikus Pretorius (Olympic Club), Dallen Stanford (Belmont Shore), Shalom Suniula (Brisbane), Kevin Swiryn (unattached), Chris Wyles (captain, Saracens)

2008 United States to USA 7s (3-3, Bowl finalists)
Todd Clever (OMBAC), James Gillenwater (Santa Cruz), Troy Hall (White Plains), Riaan Hamilton (OMBAC), Matt Hawkins (OMBAC), Valenese Malifa (Belmont Shore), Takudzwa Ngwenya (Biarritz), Thretton Palamo (Biarritz), Mike Palefau (Petrarca), Jason Pye (Park City Haggis), Dallen Stanford (Belmont Shore), Chris Wyles (captain, OMBAC)

On northern California

If you dare call American rugby is a 'sleeping giant,' you've never been to northern California.

Despite stormy weather last week, match after match was relocated, rearranged, and otherwise brought off as countless volunteers surmounted unplayable fields and sundry other obstacles. The estimable Pelican's Beak chronicles a collective response that probably could not be replicated in the Commonwealth countries.

Truth be told, such rapid response happens all over America, all the time. But that part of this week's Beak which really belies the blinkered observations is entitled 'Youthquake'. I quote liberally:

When did ‘youth rugby’ refer to the high school game? Two years ago?

No more. So sudden are the changes it feels like a wormhole opened and deposited a Youth Rugby Quadrant into Northern California. So sudden, at least, to those of us who have not been doing the work for the past five years…

NorCal high school freshmen teams will consist largely of veteran players in a few years if what happens on Sunday mornings at pitches around Pelicanland is any indication, and college coaches will be working with players who’ve been living on the oval planet half their lives soon thereafter.

But the real story: little kids are playing rugby in great numbers and you need to see it to revel in it.

Host Lamorinda put three U12 teams onto the sub-divided Pat Vincent Memorial pitch simultaneously Sunday morning to play Santa Clara, Marin and Danville. I’m told that the visiting teams could all field multiple sides were they playing at home, and in fact their kids were playing intra-squad games among the non-travelers.

When we arrived, the U10s were playing in equal numbers.

The trouble with cliches like 'sleeping giant' is usually they are out of touch, just as bromides about 'the way forward' come from those who haven't lined the fields. NorCal's youthquake phenomenon stems from myriad unnamed locals who know nothing of USARFU's strategic plans, but stop at nothing in their enthusiasm to make a game they have always loved better for their children.

Quite evidently they are wide awake and working hard. It is only too bad such industry will not be visible this weekend, as world rugby's elite comes to the USA 7s.

Update: Grand Prix Sports & Entertainment and Melville

Update: Following yesterday's post regarding USARFU chief executive Nigel Melville's role with Grand Prix Sports & Entertainment, Melville emailed to confirm his place on the company's board of directors.

'USAR[FU] are entitled to a place on [GPSE's] board', he wrote, adding that another representative of the union could take his place. The topic is to be addressed this weekend at the USA 7s tournament.

Melville also confirmed that GPSE's rights to USARFU's club and territorial 7s championships and a future collegiate 7s championship had lapsed.

Meanwhile at the USA 7s, the US Rugby Football Foundation is staging a pair of fundraisers: a scramble golf tournament on Friday morning, and poker game that evening. The latter event, which features a guaranteed prize of $5,000, is to include past Eagle captains Mike Saunders, Chris Lippert, and Brian Vizard, USRFF's director. Proceeds will be directed to the organization's youth and high school development efforts.

Related: 7s conflict of interest for USARFU executive?

7s conflict of interest for USARFU executive?

Nigel Melville's role as director of a for-profit 7s enterprise is posing conflict-of-interest concerns for the chief executive of USARFU.

Grand Prix Sports & Entertainment, which holds an exclusive USARFU sanction that underpins the startup's business strategy, is soliciting multimillion-dollar investments in a Las Vegas 7s competition looking to kick off next fall. Its prospectus presents Melville as if he were a director of the offering, raising the question whether the union is formally involved in the unannounced capital raising.

Gambling, a second major selling point of the GPSE prospectus, creates additional difficulties for the union executive. Many of Boulder's members are minors who may not legally wager, while the pastime is generally disdained by the USOC and the NCAA, from whom USARFU has been struggling to win varsity status for women's rugby.

Melville did not responded to requests for comment.

At minimum, Melville's relationship with GPSE, described by the latter's founder as 'totally awesome and supportive' in a January American Rugby interview, suggests a nonchalant attitude toward those players and coaches, educators and parents who prefer the sports education system to sports entertainment industry. Following rugby's inclusion in the Olympic Games, there have never been more opportunities to access varsity resources for participant, institutional, and commercial growth.

In the business world, investors frequently take seats on a startup's board in order to monitor affairs. Business objectives are complementary and the investor's financial motive is explicit. Straddling nonprofit and for-profit organizations can be more complicated when organizational goals are not clearly aligned or the nonprofit's members have no visibility into the private company's affairs.

'Our exclusive agreement with USA Rugby means that Grand Prix Sports & Entertainment will be the only media company with the rights to create, produce, and broadcast fully sanctioned rugby sevens content,' reads the company's investment offering. 7s matches will 'instantly connect with the coveted 18- to 34-year-old male demo while providing gambling and sports-betting audiences off-the-charts gaming action,' it adds elsewhere.

GPSE purchased rights to USARFU-sanctioned commercial 7s competition in 2005, at a time when previous chief executive Doug Arnot was in desperate need of cash. Three years later, Melville extended GPSE's license to the union's long-established club and territorial national championships as well as a new collegiate 7s championship.

GPSE had been in arrears in making payments, however, and it is not known whether the rights granted in 2008 have lapsed. Melville had not responded to a query, underlining the point that a private company's director may not wish to discuss its business affairs, though they are of interest to the member-supported union.

Simultaneously, USARFU holds an equity position in and receives annual licensing fees from the USA 7s, and Melville also serves on the advisory board of that competition. The USA 7s and the yet-to-launch GPSE competition are commercial rivals.

Interestingly, GPSE and USARFU itself may end up competing for scarce sponsor dollars, as both are looking to sell advertising packages. Pat Guthrie, the longtime congressman from Southern California, is chief revenue officer and president of the American Rugby Football League, the GPSE entity which will govern domestic 7s competitions. (American RFL is different from conventional, 13-a-side rugby league in America, whose governing body is known as American National Rugby League, or AMRNL.)

Guthrie and Southern California officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Related: 7s: Did USARFU sell too cheaply?

High school yearbook tells the story

I like American rugby stories, so Gonzaga College High School's 2009 yearbook is a welcome addition to the collection.

Among my favorite features are a list of alumni at top college teams (including Cal, Penn State, and Tennessee), player profiles that identify where the seniors are heading next (last year's tri-captains were to enroll at Harvard, Navy, and Virginia Tech), and an honor roll of youngsters who have played for local representative teams. These are the details that bring to life the Washington DC school's prodigious achievements.

One could argue that 100-page, photo-filled yearbooks are a byproduct for a team that's won 2 consecutive MAVRC titles, 10 straight Potomac crowns, and 5 Mid-Atlantic championships in the past 6 seasons. Lesser outfits needs to focus on 'the basics'.

I think it's the other way around. Mindful that any one person's time is limited, we know that great programs address all facets of building a team, and thus winning becomes a measure of the system's performance. Act like a champion, then become a champion.

Moreover, the 2009 yearbook presents Gonzaga rugby as a sport you'd want to be part of: winning tradition, strong support from the administration, seasoned coaching, and the opportunity to travel abroad. The focus is the student athlete, and there is no drivel about positional descriptions or 'how to watch a rugby game'; implicitly, the staff is more than capable of teaching such things.

Gonzaga began practicing this past Monday for the 2010 season, which sees the Eagles head to Italy before opening the MAVRC league season against Hyde on April 16.

Related:
    Expanded Maverick league kicks off
    Maverick league underway in Washington DC

Refs mentor Porter stepping down

Bryan Porter, whose sharp eye helped mold many of America's international referees, is stepping down from active duty with USARFU and the IRB.

Having emigrated from New Zealand some five decades ago, Porter played in San Francisco before taking up the whistle. He would have been a candidate for national honors at the time of the union's founding, but instead agreed to chair a new committee charged to standardize and improve the America's officiating.

Porter has held the role of national evaluator ever since. Most of the country's best and brightest, ranging from Dennis Shanagher, Ian Nixon, and Don Morrison to Don Reordan, Al Klemp, and latterly Dana Teagarden, would have worked extensively with the former insurance executive.

Like players, referees are promoted on the basis of consistently good performance, and an official's showing in high-stakes contests is thought to reflect on his referee society, if not the entire union. Even within rugby's closely knit fraternity, the matter of identifying and evaluating elite referees is an enigmatic calling, requiring judgment of technical skill and also temperament.

More a jocular fellow than eminence grise, Porter was often be found on the sidelines or under the referees' tent, intent on the craft. He is expected to continue working in the Northern California area, which boasts one of the country's larger and more active referee societies.

Porter is to be honored at dinners on both coasts in the springtime.

Related: Ref rankings revamped