USA

We were at a breakfast the other day with some rugby people and the topic of lowering the age of rugby players in America came up and became a hot topic of discussion.

I don’t know the exact stats, but I wonder what the average age is of someone who first starts to play rugby in the US? I’m guessing 17ish? Compare this to the age at which they start playing traditional American sports. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out the difference in age and therefore experience and ability.

How many elementary or middle schools run any sort of rugby program in a phys ed class, or in an after school program? Certainly less than 1% of America’s nearly 100,000 schools have teams. Is the game institutionalized anywhere throughout the country? While the Play Rugby USA program has coached in over 58 schools in NYC there are 1,400 schools and 1.1 MILLION students, so we’re only scraping the tip of the iceberg.

The high school game is steadily improving and the numbers of programs (over 750 I believe) are growing year on year exposing more students to the game, with a national culminating tournament and a US U19 team helping promote the sport at this level.

In some areas of the US the local club game for youth is growing too with more players and younger players trying the sport for the first time at the weekends.
 
There have also been a lot of discussions lately and some great ideas for improving the quality of the college program and promoting it to the masses in the USA – which is a separate article and has already been covered and hopefully if successful can help fuel younger athletes taking up the sport.

BUT, what standard of rugby player can we create, even with a high caliber athlete if they are taking up a sport for the first time aged 18 or even older? The skills needed and the ability to read the game at a top level takes years to acquire with the foundation of them being engrained as almost habits during a students younger years.  Examine the top rugby playing nations in the world and nearly all of the best players will have started playing rugby at 5 or 6 not 15 or 16.  Are we wrong in guessing that Dan Lyle is the only real success story in recent times of a player taking up the sport at a late age and making it BIG on the National and International stage? We admit, there are a certainly a few exceptions of such players playing in super league teams across the country and a few “born and bred” guys playing overseas professionally– Paul Emerick and Todd Clever being great role models of such. Again, compare it to Tier1 rugby playing nations.

The US certainly has some of the best athletes in the world, I’m positive there is a huge database of US sprinters who can run under 10.5 seconds for the 100m (quicker than 99% of players in world rugby) but how can we identify, recruit and keep the top athletes in the US and get them playing rugby? In my opinion recruiting these players after they have “failed” at another sport is a short-sighted solution. We need to get hold of them early - the cost benefit analysis of teaching the necessary skills, knowledge and finite rugby know how just doesn’t add up. Just look at the National Team’s results since 1990. Better? Slightly, yes but significant improvement, no. How much different would the results have been in the last 5 years if in 1990 we had 500,000 students playing from the age of 8-14? I guess we don’t know until we try – after all it’s a long-term solution and won’t work in isolation of strong high performance programs, club and competition structures, etc.

Rugby is not all about being big, fast and strong. Being a foreigner and having been involved at 1st grade level I have seen this first hand. Look at Peter Stringer 5’7 and 158lbs one of the best scrum half’s in Europe for example. For some reason here in the US everybody is obsessed with your stats – how much can you bench press? Or squat? How high can you jump? How tall are you? How much do you weigh? What is your body fat %? What’s your 40? Yes these are all indicators of performance and athleticism and its important to fitness test players but having a 6’2 225lbs fly half that has a 40yd time of 4.22 but can’t pass off both hands, kick tactically or understand the game, read it to help command his team on the pitch - is useless.

So what’s the answer? Let’s consider other sports at the youth level. Of course the big 3 are huge businesses unto their own but what about softball, tennis, soccer and lacrosse at the youth levels, for example? They are not all set up perfectly but there are learning points for sure.

So, learning point number…
1) Professional systems - We need to develop professional systems around our amateur sport. This is similar to what we have done in NYC for example around urban educational programs themed around rugby, health and fitness which is replicable in other urban areas. Other models exist of course; check out i9 sports for example around youth and adult sports leagues.
2) Promotional Tools - It seems finally plans are in place to provide more comprehensive toolkits to help promote grass roots rugby - USA Rugby’s Rookie Rugby packs (curriculum, games, skill cards, DVDs, starter kit, etc) should be a good start and should compliment youth services programs such as ours.
3) Good people – volunteers, professionals, coaches, parents, educators, who will run such programs. All need to be involved for sustainable success.
4) Money! Funding will remain an issue until the IRB either step up to the plate (don’t hold your breath) or we go out and find our own money through sponsors, grants, donors and program fees.

By “We” I mean as much “you” as much as USA Rugby in Boulder. Every youth organization involved in the game needs money to move to the next level. The proposed State Based Rugby Organizations should form a framework around this for implementation at the State and local levels. Our program provides a model for urban areas. Whichever way you go, it’s a call to task – we all need to make something happen. Get some cash, pay someone to coordinate your rugby efforts and find a way to generate sustainable revenue so that you can continue to promote the game and more importantly deliver rugby programs.

Then, we get 6, 7 and 8 year olds taking up rugby and playing it through an established system through college to adult and then perhaps, we will be able to compete more effectively on an international level. Yes, it should have been done 20 years ago but hey, it wasn’t. So let’s do it now!

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