Rampart66
Juniors
- Messages
- 149
With the announcement of the USARL, there have been many opinions on these boards about the future of the sport in the United States. I think what strikes me most is the misconception of the current state of the sport.
Let me make one thing clear, both the USARL and AMNRL are both AMATEUR leagues. No one who plays in these leagues makes a living from playing rugby. Everyone involved works their 40 hour per week job and gives most of whatever free time that they have to playing, coaching and organizing their respective teams.
The Jacksonville Axemen have set the standard by which all clubs can aspire to. However, we need to look at the other teams and see the reality of the sport. Many teams scramble just to find a place to play (without paying an arm and a leg to do so). Some have to deal with different municipalities and school boards and fight to even have field usage privileges.
Some of these teams draw a handful of friends and families to watch their games. They number less than 100 and sit in folding chairs along the sidelines, because there's no other seating. Where I live, the average high school football game draws between 3,000 - 10,000 per game (depending on the size of the school). Rugby teams that represent entire metropolitan areas would love to see numbers like that.
Sponsors are a main source of revenue for the clubs, but attracting businesses to support you is a Herculean effort. You are competing for sponsorship dollars against other sports organizations and non-profit groups. In America, people go crazy with youth sports and when a business is faced with giving money to the youth soccer organization or an adult rugby league, more times than not the soccer club gets the cash.
Sometimes I joke that we would have a better chance at securing venues and sponsorships if our clubs were all comprised of 10 year old handicapped kids.
While all other major American sports have investors and ownership groups with large amounts of cash to throw arouns, rugby league remains grassroots and funded by the teams themselves with help from the community. Rugby League in America does not play in 50,000 seat stadium with lush amentities. It barely gets a mention in the local papers and then it's more of a special intrest story rather than news, stats and league standings.
So, when I hear the notion that the rugby league split is bad and will hurt the game in America; I have to ask what will it actually hurt? The only way this hurts the game is if after everything all of the clubs and players have sacrificed decide that they've had enough and walk away from the game.
But that hasn't happened. From what I know of David Niu, he'll continue to push the AMNRL and make it into the top competition that he can. The USARL has some really great minds and 2011 will be a season to test new ideas to growing the sport.
There's a lot of work to do if we want to take this sport to another level. It's going to take to combined effort of more than just a handful of people.
Both league have the same goal in mind, but each want to take a different path to get there. But given the current state of the sport there's only one direction to go and that's up.
Let me make one thing clear, both the USARL and AMNRL are both AMATEUR leagues. No one who plays in these leagues makes a living from playing rugby. Everyone involved works their 40 hour per week job and gives most of whatever free time that they have to playing, coaching and organizing their respective teams.
The Jacksonville Axemen have set the standard by which all clubs can aspire to. However, we need to look at the other teams and see the reality of the sport. Many teams scramble just to find a place to play (without paying an arm and a leg to do so). Some have to deal with different municipalities and school boards and fight to even have field usage privileges.
Some of these teams draw a handful of friends and families to watch their games. They number less than 100 and sit in folding chairs along the sidelines, because there's no other seating. Where I live, the average high school football game draws between 3,000 - 10,000 per game (depending on the size of the school). Rugby teams that represent entire metropolitan areas would love to see numbers like that.
Sponsors are a main source of revenue for the clubs, but attracting businesses to support you is a Herculean effort. You are competing for sponsorship dollars against other sports organizations and non-profit groups. In America, people go crazy with youth sports and when a business is faced with giving money to the youth soccer organization or an adult rugby league, more times than not the soccer club gets the cash.
Sometimes I joke that we would have a better chance at securing venues and sponsorships if our clubs were all comprised of 10 year old handicapped kids.
While all other major American sports have investors and ownership groups with large amounts of cash to throw arouns, rugby league remains grassroots and funded by the teams themselves with help from the community. Rugby League in America does not play in 50,000 seat stadium with lush amentities. It barely gets a mention in the local papers and then it's more of a special intrest story rather than news, stats and league standings.
So, when I hear the notion that the rugby league split is bad and will hurt the game in America; I have to ask what will it actually hurt? The only way this hurts the game is if after everything all of the clubs and players have sacrificed decide that they've had enough and walk away from the game.
But that hasn't happened. From what I know of David Niu, he'll continue to push the AMNRL and make it into the top competition that he can. The USARL has some really great minds and 2011 will be a season to test new ideas to growing the sport.
There's a lot of work to do if we want to take this sport to another level. It's going to take to combined effort of more than just a handful of people.
Both league have the same goal in mind, but each want to take a different path to get there. But given the current state of the sport there's only one direction to go and that's up.
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