A House Divided: Pro 12 and Super Rugby in North America

I'm going to interrupt my series on Elite Pathways for a moment to discuss cross-border competitions. The Scotsman revealed this week that Pro 12 chief Martin Anayi was in Houston during the Super Bowl scouting the city as a host for an American expansion team for the league. This is the latest in a series of reports regarding the struggling league kicking the tires on North American expansion. I'm on record doubting the viability of the endeavor for a variety of reasons: cost, schedule and the league's willingness to lose planeloads of money for five to ten years for a payoff. I'm not the only one with these concerns. After PRO Rugby, I think a healthy skepticism has inoculated North American rugby fans.

Elite Pathways PART II: Representative Teams

Yesterday, I spoke about flipping the pyramid of rugby participation. We are already seeing rapid expansion of high school rugby teams in this country. How do we identify and develop all these talented rugby athletes in this country? What are our existing system? How have they grown? How can they scale with the broadening base of our participation pyramid?

Representative Teams, Historically
Teams made up of disparate players from clubs within a single union are known as representative teams. They represent that union or geographic areas. An American translation might be "all-star team." These can represent anywhere from a city or region to country. From the 1970s to early 2000s USA Rugby ran a Inter-Territorial Tournament (ITT) for fifteens and sevens composed of teams from the various Territorial Unions; East, Midwest, South, Pacific as well as a US Armed Services team. These teams would practice for a few weeks after national club championships and then play a weekend tournament. Talking to old boys in the Bay Area, it was quite an honor to pull on a Pacific Grizzlies jersey. It was also a stepping stone to Eagles selection.

Elite Pathways in American Rugby PART I

Reading Tony Ridnell's incisive calls for a strategic plan has prompted me to think a bit about the vector of our existing elite level pathways. Some of these thoughts have been percolating for a while and it is high time I've expounded on them in a format beyond twitter.

Flipping the Pyramid
Growing the youth game has been the byword at USA Rugby for at nearly two decades now.  I first recall hearing former USA Rugby CEO Doug Arnot using the phrase "flip the pyramid" in a talk to youth development development officers in 2002. The figurative pyramid is rugby participation in the United States. In the early 2000s, the number of men and women in college or club rugby dwarfed the number of boys and girls playing the game. Likewise, there were less, albeit only slightly, adults playing collegiate rugby relative to club rugby. Americans joined rugby late in their young adulthood and only had a few years of competition prior to their peak athletics years.