Sleeping giant could be waking from a slumber

Marlin: What's better, getting athletes to learn the strategy and nuances of rugby at a young age like in other established countries or taking a bunch of guys who know nothing about the sport, chucking them a ball and saying "Here, play"? Sure, the former will take a longer time but it will pay off better. Look at soccer, just now we're beginning to see players like Altidore, Donovan and Onyewu establish themselves and the team, and it's still a work in progress.

It's based in the North-West City of Alkmaar. And there are plans to expand their talent development program Nationwide in the next year aswell as opening another Academy.

This is completely off topic. But still focuses on Rugby. The Dutch Rugby Board has established its own Rugby Academy in its West District. I'm assuming that the West of the Country. From what I have read. It will involve a 6 year program for player's 12 to 18. U12's player's at the Academy will train an average of 12 hours a weeks and will increase each year. The 18's will train up to 20 hours a week with the Academy. The DRB are expecting the jumior Dutch squads to be entirely dominated by these Academy player's in the years to come. They are obviously trying to boost the standard of Dutch Rugby. Should be interesting to see if it does.

Thelmawrites Their is a lot of differences. But it the few similarities that would intially draw people to the game will certainly help.

Pippinu "it's actually more important to emphasize the difference rather than the likeness". My grad school supervisor was a kiwi who earned his MS from Victoria Uni and his PhD from U of Wisconsin. He liked both rugby and gridiron because of their difference: gridiron is like a military campaign wherewas rugby was more random. Let's hope the Americans see it that way too.

USRugbyFan That's pretty much my thinking in regards to High School Rugby. Marlin keeps saying get an ex-NFL player to increase exposure. Which would probably work. However, this is unlikely unless they are exposed to Rugby. High School would be perfect. Rugby needs to focus its effeorts toward High School Football player's and Wrestler's as an appropriate off season sport. It could work. With a Elite College league to go to those who miss out on Football/Basketball/Wrestling scholarships would have another option and some of the most talented might choose it as their first. If both Leagues are established and televised it would be prudent to give explanations via the refs and on screen to familarise the rules to new audiences. The College League would be pretty predictable in terms of who. Cal, BYU etc. Being a College thing most of the hard marketing and promotion will be done within the circles to build attendance. Whilst TV promotion would grow the general public's awareness. For the possible Pro League, hopefully more details will arrive by early next year. It would be essential for all parties to get it established asap. They will need to set up shop early on so they can promote the Comp in their local communities intensively to draw support. Six months should surfice.

You would not even have imagined it 20 years ago.

This would be especially useful in games played in Melbourne. The ref could turn to the main stand and say through the loud speaker: "infringement against that big bugger down there looking like a beached whale for failing to release the ball in an offside position betwixt the advantage line and the three quarter blind side Freddy or something or another". We Southerners might finally understand what the hell's going on!!! :)

This post makes the very most sense since, well, since I last read one of my own!!

Just a thought: if the United States becomes a force in world rugby, we can expect refereeing to be of a higher standard than at present. We wouldn't be bleating about the refs day after day, week after week. They'd be singing from the same page.

Having USA Rugby "push highschool football coaches to push rugby for football players off season etc..... 1) I would bet against USA Rugby being able to push a shopping cart-but even if they did.... 2) Why would a football coach want to expose the player to the injury risk? Unless he didn't have use for them? 3) Even if they did.....it would take 100 years to work. Develoment occurs when the kids themselves want to play like... 4) From the current status....it looks like USA Rugby has been emulating Lacrosse. They're in a race to see which sport can be the most irrelevent to Americans. Just jam ex nfl guys in and see who makes it. Think ESPN would cover all the rugby highlights of Edgerrin James or Donte Stallworth....how bout Plaxico Burress. Buzz would be MONSTER and kids would dig seeing how they're hero's handle the no pads game. 100 yrs of coaches whispering sweet nothings to their charges about the benefits of rugby couldn't hold a candle to seeing if T.O could give it a go.

WCR: Ideally a pro rugby league in the US should start in late Feburary soon after the Super Bowl to capitalize on the legions of despondant football fans suddenly lacking in a contact sport. It would help rugby establish itself as the "spring contact sport". I think even more than getting NFL and college football castoffs into rugby, USA Rugby really needs to push high school rugby for football players. If high school football coaches saw rugby as a legitimate way to keep their players in shape and working on related skills throughout the spring rather than running track or something, it would be huge. Not only would it help legitimize rugby to their peers, but high caliber athletes might realize they enjoy rugby more and if they had an opportunity to play high level rugby in college (College Super League) than you might see more great athletes choose rugby over football over basketball. Re lacrosse, sure it looks strange but US Lacrosse has been doing everything that USA Rugby hasn't to grow the game and it's working for them. Kids love it, it's on TV and in the public eye more and more, games are being played in NFL stadiums, and draw crowds rugby can only dream of. Hard to argue with that.

"if" the USA ever evolved into a top 8 international side, would be a huge spring tour for the wallabies, AB's and Boks. London, Paris New York, sounds like a perfume bottle!!!! :)

The USA is a "sleeping giant" at soccer too. The US soccer team is seeing some improvement, but if you look at the difference in participation in soccer vs. rugby (maybe 100-1 in favor of soccer) it looks bleak. I know people are excited for rugby 7's in the Olympics.....but it's just a fetish. Only way to amp up the Int. game is to take rejects from NFL and jam them into rugby. There is a guy (Leonard something...) who just started playin 7's for the US and he use to be a saftey in the NFL for the Bears.....But let's be serious. He only made their practice squad and only for 1 year. Talk about on the margins....he went to the University of Hawaii to only add to the marginality. When we start getting guys that went on to play a bit in the NFL (not practice squad) or from bigtime football programs cross over....that's when interest will start to cook stateside. Imagine if US Rugby signed Mike Vick? Now that's buzz....and buzz is all that;s necessary to get the gam on tv and get people into it. The spring and summer post NFL season is a very depressing time in the states for sports fans. Rugby could capitalize on this-especially if they had some former NFL guys in the mix. Everyone would want to see how they do "without the pads" because it's considered crazy by gridiron sorts-only if they have never played rugby before. If they have they know how counterintuitive it is....because the pads make collisions hurt so much more than without. This sort of gimmickry would catapult rugby interest more than 50 years of "grassroots" funding and involvement. It's just a matter of time before someone with pull "gets it".

It's also one not grounded in reality.

Pip. The similarities are a double edged sword. It will be up to USARugby to create and emphasis of its points of difference. But it would be those similarites that would at least initially attract them to watch.

WCR I played a bit of lacrosse in my youth (there are a few lacrosse clubs in the Western suburbs of Melbourne). Certainly a great game to play, and requires a bit of skill to play properly. It's pretty huge in Canada (where it originates), and I presume it's a fairly well known across the border, but probably not as popular as it is in Canada. But the thing is that it's completely different to most games (although North Americans may liken some aspects of it to Hockey). Wtih Rugby having some similarities to Gridiron, I imagine that that can be both a positive and a negative (recalling just how massive the NFL is), i.e. you don't necessarily want Americans to compare the two because their loyalty will always be with their own brand of football - it's actuallly more important to emphasise the difference rather than any likeness.

UsRugbyFan Rugby has an advantage over Lacrosse. It is similar enough in repects to American Football. To be honest I haven't seen alot of Lacrosse but from what I have seen it lacks the bit hits and spectacular athletism that Rugby and American Football offer. It's has been an interesting time watching the progress of Rugby in the US. The Women's CBL looks promising. They are already looking to expand that from 4 teams to 12 with the possibility of 16 for next year.

USRugbyFan I'm hoping they see sense and play the proposed 'City Based League' on a home and away basis. With a final series. So hopefully 12 weeks in total. At first they should play the first year independent of Canada. But I definitely support the introduction of Canadian teams. They have established their own U20's League so they'll be competitive. Maybe the second year. Getting televised would be essential. Which I actually won't be that much of a stretch. Play it after the NFL season. Try and capture some of that audience on a regular basis. If marketed correctly it could have potential. But as you have made clear no one should even begin to believe this will be easy. The College League could be the Pro League's strength. I'm assuming that the Pro teams would recruit directly out of this League. A College League with actual programs would drastically boost the quality of Rugby being played in fromt of new and existing audiences. College sports seem to be the backbone of all sports in the USA. That seems to be the case when viewing from afar. Already teams like Cal, BYU and Kutztown drawn 2-3,000 a game. Its good to see that Rugby in the US is planning to move away from the SuperLeague. Admirable attempt but ultimately flawed as the Premier Club Comp. With a prospective Pro League the Super League should be looking to develop itself as the step directly below it. Establish working relationships with the Pro teams. Help to develop depth. Many possible Rugby athletes won't always go to College. So the Super League would be the ideal place for the to develop in the view of the possible Pro League.

An elite league consisting of the top college programs in the US playing regular nationally televised games against one another throughout the spring, when football is on the back burner and basketball is over, is the best thing that could happen for rugby in the United States. American fans recognize names like Cal, BYU, Army, Navy, and Penn State, and running a successful competition that brings in fans, receives alumni support, and would hopefully gain support from the involved school's athletic departments would boost rugby tremendously. I'm suspicious of this "city based league" that's only supposed to run for two months before the American Rugby Championship. If USA Rugby tries to set this up as a warm up competition with all the focus on the ARC it's going to fail. I don't believe the ARC will be that successful from a marketing standpoint. American fans don't care about what is essentially an A side competition with a few teams from Canada and Argentina. They'll rightly see it as a bush league set up. To be successful, USA Rugby needs to look at what MLS has done and take a page from their book. Maybe start out with a 6 team league, with 2 teams in Vancouver and Toronto, and run it from February to June or July, perhaps with a 12 or 14 game schedule. Get it on ESPN or ESPN2 and sell it to sponsors and market the crap out of it, any way you can. Even than it's no guaranteed success. Lacrosse, which has deep roots on the East Coast and is the fastest growing youth participatory sport in America is still struggling to market itself professionally.