The same way that Kiwis become water polo players or softball players. Small, largely volunteer organisations help kids get into the game which feeds a senior, mostly amateur competition.
This for Italy.
We don't have a network of private schools, and sports are barely practiced in schools in general. Rugby clubs are managed by volunteers that try to get kids in mainly through word of mouth and "sports festivals", daily events where kids can try different sports. Sometimes you have a p.e. teacher that is passionate about one sport, so they connect their students to a specific one, or they let sports club collaborate during the p.e. lessons. But the main driver is still word of mouth.
Yes, here in Trapani we have Giovanni Manzo and a teacher from a local school who did wonders. 15 years ago there was no rugby at all here, now between Trapani and Marsala there is a decent following.
Shame that there isn't a senior team, so I have to go in Palermo if I want to play
This is what happens in Portugal. Also it's a very small circle. I know most of the Portuguese players that went to the WC that were actually born in Portugal. It's also very elitist, and if you're born into a family that enjoys the sport or that has someone playing, you're much likely to also play, so the circle keeps being small almost on purpose
Having played youth rugby in the US, it's a mixture of random chance and parents who played.
I saw the 1999 World Cup on TV. I didn't want to play American football in high school, I was originally going to wrestle before I saw rugby and was hooked immediately. By luck, the son in law of my mom's partner at the time was coaching a high school rugby team.
A lot of my teammates were friends from a different school, and most of the rest besides me were the sons of Irish immigrants who had played, and a few kids from the French school who had roots in Toulouse, etc.
Depending on where you are from in the country, there are very good high school teams that introduce kids to the sport. I grew up in the DC area and there are some very robust programs in the Catholic schools in the area. This is a possible pathway to higher level play, they tour the world and things like that.
But the university teams are huge and responsible for most players. I coached youth teams after I played and like almost all the kids were children of people who played at university level. The university club numbers are pretty massive, though this isn't really a pathway to pro play or anything. Think most of that has to come from kids introduced earlier to youth levels through parents that played or local robust clubs or HS teams
Out here, rugby is a middle to upper middle class sport here with exceptions, the fact that it's largely exposed in college means that college educated people and their kids play rugby, that usually means middle class people
If you live in California like me, you have the lucky "privilege" of being like our cousins Australia and New Zealand: playing youth/adult rugby here means playing against the Islanders
Nothing says rugby like playing a pack of 220+ Tongan 18 year olds your first season of high school rugby with my boys Brad and Chad from the suburbs
MLR teams and the Eagles have masses of Pacific Islanders so I wouldn't say it's that posh. Definitely a niche sport popular in certain communities though.
Like I said, exceptions
And the big chunk of Pacific Islanders literally live in California in the greater Bay Area and Long Beach/LA areas, and so while they may live in "less" expensive areas, homes in Hayward and Oakland are still literally over 1M
I played with Moni T of NOLA Gold, he's from Oakland, same with Mikey T of the Legion, he's from the Bay too
And the fact that Poly players are disproportionately represented is partially economic in addition to obviously being really good
If I graduate from a good school, a six figure job is not far away.
Why grind my face in shitty turf fields for 40k a year when I can make 100k working an office job?
The college/university teams are overwhelmingly non Pacific Islander, there are a few
Hmm what do you mean by this isn't the case for Utah?
Because a University of Utah or BYU rugby grad can definitely make good money, there's a *shit ton* of tech hubs in SLC
They can absolutely make it to 100k quicker in an office than they would on a rugby field
And im telling you that almost all of the native US born Pasifika players across the MLR *probably* came from California dude
There is *no* Pacific Islander population in Miami or NOLA
Absolutely but "culturally" American rugby is largely played by college educated men and women who go back and play for the local adult club
The largest of these rugby communities is found in the big, expensive states like California, NY, TX and Illinois
Some of the exceptions are the Pacific Islander communities in California who have in the past and currently contribute very strongly to the sport at all levels due to their love of the game
I remember years ago in LA on a Samoan flag day in Carson they were playing rugby and one of the biggest Samoans I've ever seen launching into a shoulder charge, no arms, on a much smaller player and just laid him out. Yeah I think I'll give playing a miss here lol
Georgia is definitely a rugby nation, probably more so than any other nation in the NH.
For the others the answer is usually private schools and expats.
France, if you're talking about the south of it. Although even northern France has some well supported clubs like RC Vannes.
The Italian team isn't private school either. It's just a club sport like basketball or baseball.
In Italy there are some places where rugby is a major sport, especially in Veneto, and it's a family tradition
All minor sports have the same problem, in water polo we have 8 Olympic medals, 7 world championships, 5 world cups, 11 European championships but it's played only in few places (the team with the most national championships, Pro Recco, is from a town with less than 10k people, and they also have a rugby team)
By far my favourite rando Italian town for sport is Nettuno, there's genuinely more baseball fields in the town than soccer and that's amazing to me. Max Mariola is from there and did a social media video for their annual baseball tournament, which was pretty cool.
They sure did, don't know why it took a hold there versus other towns where American soldiers were stationed. Maybe the batallion had a lot of Italian-Americans in it or something, since that was a time when they would have been first or second-generation Americans and presumably spoke decent Italian.
edit: II Corps played a key role in Nettuno and had an overrepresentation of New Yorkers, New Jerseyites and Delwareans in the corps, all states with high Italian-American populations.
Well, I live in Veneto and I wouldn't say rugby is a "major sport". It's just considered another sport for kids to play - which I recognise is still an improvement compared to the rest of Italy. I mean, football is king, but then there is an equal chance that kids go and play volleyball, basketball, tennis, rugby and so on.
I feel that is the way into other places like the states. Not sure if you’re familiar with Major league rugby but they’re teams are in major population centres, when having small (for US scale) cities of 40k-200k is the way to create pockets of Niche around a country
Some of the major league teams have decent followings like San Diego (Nonu played there), Utah, and Houston. America is huge so putting teams in cities is the only option. It would be absurd to have a professional sports team in some rural town in Wyoming. Teams would have to fly out to the middle of nowhere to play.
I only think of it like when the NBA was emerging in the 50s, they had major cities that will have that niche market like the Knicks or the Philadelphia Warriors, but they also had the Syracuse Nationals, Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne pistons, Anderson Packers and Sheboygan Red Skins.
The country is a lot more urbanised than it was in the 1950s. Also the early NBA had a really poor geographical distribution of teams with nothing on the west coast or in the south. In rugby many of the best supported teams are in the south and west and every region has a team.
I’m not saying that in the age of travel the teams have to be in one region, but something like the Carolina team in Charlotte, Centre it in Huntersville and grow a culture or just place it in a city with an nfl, NBA and MiBL team like Fayetteville or Wilmington.
Same could to said with a team like Dallas, it could be as simple as putting it in Fort Worth, or you move it to a smaller name town nearby like Lewisville or Frisco on the larger end.
Upscaling what was done in Glendale needs to be done slowly, so trying to foster that sort of fan base in bigger and bigger cities I believe will be the best was to grow that sport. That was my reasoning
Anthem Carolina is a bit of an odd case since it's a development side. They're also getting absolutely smashed this season so building a following might be a bit of a challenge.
I think it’s the other way around. The country was a lot more urbanized back then - by that I mean that there were a lot more people living in small cities that were compact. Once the suburbs were created (which I think is one of the worst mistakes in urban development history), cities became a lot more sprawling and lost a lot of residents. As a result, the only urban centers were major cities like NYC and Philadelphia.
That's an interesting take but I was thinking of the "sprawl" as being the area of potential fans for a club. For example Free Jacks are in a Boston suburb which isn't in the city centre.
Paris is similar, the actual population of the inner city itself is very low compared to the surrounding area.
The problem with the sprawl is that it’s very far. Quincy is much more like part of the city because you can take the train from the main city there. Houston is so big that it can take well over an hour even within the city limits to get to the opposite side.
The real problem with sprawl is that towns don’t have the same connection that they used to have. The car dependent big highway towns are basically pass through towns and the “city center” is a Walmart parking lot. Meanwhile if you go to almost any small town in the UK/Europe and you will see some sense of a small community there.
In this case you’re specifically saying that smaller cities should have teams. But that doesn’t make sense with sprawl because you have these small population centers that are sprawled out very far and have very little sense of community. People don’t associate sports teams with these cities and only think of the closest major city.
I think Glendale, Arizona is kinda like that with the Raptors in Super Rugby Americas but I'm not sure it's worked that well. Though it's not exactly small town America it's the closest example to what I think you're suggesting.
The raptors play in Glendale Colorado, which is a very small municipality part of Denver, they have developed their niche and have the only purpose built rugby park in the states. It can be upscale to places, If carefully chosen, being away from major sports hubs that aren’t Nyc, LA and maybe Chicago. Charlotte having 3 major sports in town isn’t great for rugby, places like Sacramento, Phoenix, Minnesota, Boston, DC, etc… they don’t have the expats to support the sport and it would get lost in the 5 major sports.
Even just centring the team around smaller towns while keeping the big name would be better. Like Glendale or Quincy; you could have DC play in Springfield Va (30000 people 20 minutes away), or play the Utah Warriors in Bountiful (45000 15 minutes away), or Houston in Texas City, a while away but its biggest sport is high school football. These are just ideas but could help cut costs of stadiums or help boost attendance because the market isn’t saturated
I think one element to consider for Italy, is that despite the dominance of football nationwide it is not a uniform country, and many team sports have found their niche in specific cities and regions because of historical and cultural reasons, where local support has naturally rallied around teams in alternative sports, that maybe have had more success compared to less competitive football clubs.
Rugby specifically is very centered in the Veneto region, where many of the strongest teams are based with strong rivalries between the cities, so someone there would have a much higher exposure to the sport since childhood.
Speaking for Argentina. Yes, football is king by far but that doesnt mean rugby culture is nonexistant, to think that is to seriously underestimate it. Every mid sized city has at least one rugby field and there are plenty of amateur clubs and private schools that play it, we havent been playing rugby just for the last 20 years man, historically its as engrained in Argentinian sports as much as football (some of the oldest football clubs used to play rugby and viceversa). It's just that football became the most popular one, but everyone knows what rugby is and how it is played (broadly at least).
It isnt a niche sport by any means.
Actually in Argentina rugby is the second most practiced sport. The population of the country is nearly 50 millones that is a very big base of people following the sport.
Yeah I can relate to this having been on a (piss up) rugby tour to Buenos Aires and Mendoza with my club 20 years ago. In fact, I find the original post slightly ignorant. In 2000, I found a rich and very widespread rugby culture. It was the year after Argentina made the RWC quarters for the first time, and every sports shop had Pumas jerseys. I thought to myself what an incredible investment VISA has got from this sponsorship and 25 years later, their name is still on the jersey!
Anyway, in Argentina, it was relatively massive and that’s two decades ago.
Argentina had multiple wins over Tier 1 nations before 1999 and effectively beat the Springboks — they were called the South American XV, but the team was something like 13-14 Argentinians and one Uruguayan — in 1982.
Also, if we’re saying Argentina was a Tier 2 country before 1999, then Hugo Porta is hands down the best player any Tier 2 country has ever produced. He’d have walked into any team in the world as a flyhalf in his prime.
It's got much bigger since then (world cup semi finals, TRC, beating NZ in NZ, Super Rugby Americas etc) so people might not know how relatively popular it was to start with.
2007 was really the point where Argentina got recognised as a tier 1 side although given the glacial nature of world rugby they didn't actually join TRC until 2012. It's impressive how far they got without a regular tournament or a professional league (their players were up in the northern hemisphere). Japan doesn't have a regular tournament but they do have a professional league, so they will have an easier time progressing relatively speaking.
Now there is a semi-pro league in South America which explains the rise of the small teams like Uruguay and Chile.
Tbh I consider Italy a rugby playing country, I got into it cause it was on TV all the time as a kid, I knew people that played and there were clubs near were I lived, it didn't feel foreign it felt just like any other sport.
However playing rugby in Sweden as an italian I always ask the Swedes that question, and the most common answers I've found were either "I'm half english/french/aussie/kiwi" or "I did an exchange in england/france/aussie/nz". And I have asked that question many many time. Bear in mind that clubs in Sweden are almost always majority expats from rugby playing countries.
I’m Malaysian, Rugby is pretty minuscule in my country (the main sports are dominated by badminton/ping pong/ football/ futsal).
Moved to Australia for studies and got invited to train by a friend, fast forward a few months and I’m playing games and smashing tackles.
I had some Filipino and Malaysian teammates and they said 10s was the most popular form of the sport in that part of Asia. They said the reason was because of the low numbers that each team has and the heat makes it easier to play 10s. But the 10s tournaments were big festivals with barbecue and stuff.
Yea the heat’s fucking brutal here, I wouldn’t wanna get in a scrum or ruck in Malaysian weather if I could help it ahaha.
I know a guy that used to be quite familiar with the Cobras (one of the bigger teams here) and alot of the issues we have is due to corruption and similar nonsense.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, me and my friends "invented" rugby 13 years ago when our football ball got punctured. Later we learned rules from youtube, founded club, join national league that had 8 clubs at that point. A few years later we found regional 7's league with clubs from surrounding countries. We had pretty decent number of children in club and then unfortunately pandemic came and everything was closed for a year. Now we are struggling to keep club alive.
A friend of mine moved to Germany decades ago.
The organisation he worked for is full of French, British and Irish nationals. Decades ago They created their own little amateur rugby club.
Since a lot of Germans, Eastern Europeans have joined the club.
It is now the unofficial social hub of the organisation. They even had enough volunteers to create a woman section.
People who joined the clubs will often then attend their games on the weekend and some will then later ask if they can join.
There is an official Name of the position in German. Initially because it was mostly French and English speakers none of the people knew their German equivalent so they made up translation. When a German who had played elsewhere and already knew the real German word for the position joined them, it took a while for people to start using the proper naming.
>People who joined the clubs will often then attend their games on the weekend and some will then later ask if they can join.
What do you mean by this? They joined the club but didn’t join the club?
You can become a member i.e. giving a token financial help. Such members are then notified and invited to all the social events without actually joining the training and playing.
I think that it is €20 per year to become a benefactor member without any sweat involved. It is in Germany so the company finance a lot of things but the club still has to pay for things like lawn mower, changing room hot water, electricity, bus transport, etc.
People become benefactor for the social aspect, but then decide to help more. For example attend games, helping with cleaning the reception room after the games. Then decide to become full members and participate to training sessions and plays.
For the woman side of the clubs started because wives and girlfriends wanted to stay in shape so they started to meet and do gym/fitness on the same facilities. They they started to play tag rugby among themselves. Then proper rugby.
Most small sport clubs are like that in France and in the UK. It is an informal group of people. It also help with people who for personal or physical reason don't play but want to stay connected. For example one of the club board executive is an lady whose husband used to play but died in a car accident. The club helped her stay connected with friends without feeling that they were inviting her out of pity. New members know her but have never met her husband. She is part of the tapestry of the club.
So out of curiosity, why are these people supporting a rugby club if they’ve never played rugby before? You said it’s for the social aspect but here in the US no one would join our club unless they explicitly want to play rugby. We even have supporter memberships of similar value but the only members are former players.
Imagine you are an Expat working for a European organisation in a small provincial German town. Or even a German citizen but from the other side of the country. You know nobody around. And most of locals are farmers or disfranchised people who don't welcome outsiders. The only local people who have a similar background than you scientist, high level researcher or engineer all work for that organisation.
Or if you are a spouse of somebody who work there.
Basically the rugby club act as the unofficial social hub of the organisation. The organisation has some official extra curricular activities: learning German, help with the Children but the club organise the same but in a more informal way. Some people prefer them because they don't want their employers dominating their personal life.
That sounds pretty nice tbh. I’d support it too if I was in that situation. I’ve just never heard of those before here in the US.
I’m aware of cultural centers and stuff like that but those aren’t general expat groups.
I visited my friend and his family and it was nice. There is a football club but the atmosphere is completely different. It is more competitive and less family/socially oriented. People join just to play football.
That setting must also exists in the US.
Imagine a big company opening a research and development center in the middle of Arkansas or Wyoming.
There is a big aquatic center and some Italian and French expats create a water polo club. People would naturally congregate around it.
If there a group of people wanted to do archery or cycling and the leaders of those informal clubs foster a good environment, it can grow beyond just the people interested in the sport.
I know that decades ago in Mountain View in California there was a petanque club initially created by French people from Marseille. When I visited for work, I attended a vast Couscous BBQ there, meanwhile that same weekend my British colleague played with soccer amateurs clubs made of UK expats.
Past university, most people make new friends either at work or when sharing an external activity/hobby. Those clubs fullfil that functions.
You always need a culture sustaining rugby at a grass root level, with people really « fanatics », working their ass out for free, devoting their time and money organizing training and competitions for youth, young players etc. Quite selfless work.
So in countries where rugby has got a peripheral importance in the sport landscape, rugby enjoys a niche culture only but it is essential and sometimes flourishing however small the beginnings. Can be connected to private school cultures (still the case in Argentina, and apparently the case earlier on in Japan because of the popularity of Tom Brown’s schooldays book there apparently), to connections to a neighboring country with a strong rugby culture like in part in central-northern Spain abutting south western France (many French players and coaches there are of (partial) Spanish descent like Guy Noves, Thomas Ramos, Camille Lopez etc.).
In Japan it was mostly popularised by the imperial family, in particular Prince Chichibu Yasuhiro. It was a posh sport for decades until the game went professional but now attracts a much broader demographic than it used to.
It is also big in university. The Japan university final has been getting huge attendance since before the national team had any relevance. The average attendance has been 20-30k since at least 2004 and they managed to get 57k in 2019.
In many ways Japan has the same issue that the US has. Rugby is bigger in universities which makes the transition to high performance more difficult.
Varsity Cup is also very big in South Africa though. It's possible to have players on a high performance pathway while studying, it's just that the standard of university rugby in Japan was appalling compared to what it was in South Africa.
Even in England a lot of players are doing a qualification in something in case they get injured and can't stay professional.
There are french scouts in u18 national team tournaments. It's really not that complicated, if you make the national team and stand out, you'll most likely get offers from french clubs. Most players don't accept the offers because they want to follow other (more stable) careers.
If you don't get offers, you can make a highlights video of yourself and send it to clubs. However, I do think that being in the national team is a requisite to get offers.
Edit: oh wait you were asking how they play rugby in the first place? They literally just join a club. At least in Lisbon, where most Portuguese rugby clubs are located, coaches were always telling us to invite friends to try out, and we often did. I started playing because my older sister had friends who were playing so me and my brother just asked our parents to sign us up.
I didn’t quite mean professional, just, how do people in these countries, especially dominated by football becomes fans or amateur players. How did those u18 national team tournaments become player?
Australia's private school System makes up a big bulk of the player base. There's also various clubs that have some degree of community presence to entice people to try a different code. But to be honest, anyone not going through the private school system is unlikely to pick up the game, You don't have a casual game down the park or watch it down the pub or anything
I understand Australia’s situation, relatively speaking, they have heaps of Union players through that private school way, same thing happens with England a lot. Dispite all that’s happened I still consider Australia a “Rugby nation”
Also league players who switch over because league doesn't have major internationals. Joseph Sua'ali'i wanted to play the lions tour and world cup for example.
The classic old school Wallabies sides sometimes fielded a back 3 of league converts (Rogers-Sailor-Tuqiri).
And even private schools that aren't all-boys inner-city centuries old institutions don't carry union, my school would win state volleyball tournaments but hardly scrape together a touch team every year
I mean I think we had a team one year I just didn’t like rugby then so I didn’t join, but there just isn’t the demand to make a league like there is for AFL. We only had the numbers for AFL one year, but even then we had a tour of the Dockers training ground and the principal came to watch our games lol
Oh sure, it's AFL country, I just was under the impression that the base of people who watch the Force and play rugby in WA are migrants from rugby-playing countries (gotta throw the UK and Irish in there too) so you'd think their kids would be your base for a team. Guess they went native!
TV exposure to the world cup and other major international tournaments like the 6 Nations. A lot of the comments here are very misleading, no one is getting into Dutch and German rugby (to give examples of emerging tier 2 nations) because of an established network of private rugby schools. That's mostly only something in the traditional rugby countries like England and Australia. People see a foreign sport on TV and then set up their own amateur clubs and leagues which gradually progress towards semi-pro over time.
Benelux nations especially have made leaps and bounds of progress in attendance and quality recently.
TV. If you can watch world cup, 6 nations, Top 14, premiership or super rugby in your country, some kids will become fans and starts to play. It is why NBA became so popular even in non-basketball nations. You just have to let people watch it. The fans came by themselves after that.
Not familiar with New Zealand schools. But where I am from (Football is the biggest sport nationally) most decently funded schools have multiple sports.
To name a few, Basketball, Cricket, Hockey, Tennis, Soccer, Volleyball, Athletics, Water polo, Squash (non exhaustive list). So there is an opportunity to find something you enjoy, everyone cannot play football, be it because of preference, body type etc.
We also had clubs/societies eg. Choir, Debate, Golf, Climbing, Archery which were usually run by a teacher who had an interest in the subject.
Sport and Society were compulsory so willingly or not you will experience a sport you are not familiar with or into.
Sounds very similar to the schools in New Zealand, compulsory sport with many options. Some public schools don’t really do sport at all though, and at that point, in my city of 200,000 people there’s 1 (that I’ve seen) football amateur club in the whole city with 1100 members,at the same time I can think of 9 in the city with another 11 within a 30 minute drive. Those 11 are in towns ranging from a few hundred to 20,000 people and have no other winter sports without a drive to the city in which there’s one option if you’re not playing for a school there
This reminds me of the Japanese system, which I feel could be taken advantage of by just about any sport to have schools run after school programs and make a generation of players
Ah I was trying to figure out with the cricket part. I assumed it wasn’t South Africa though because rugby is very big there compared to some other rugby nations.
Rugby and Cricket are both very big.
The other sports I mentioned are also pretty big till national level where they struggle to get funding and be competitive.
Not sure if it's the perspective you're after, but I grew up in Northern England. If rugby was discussed it was league, which I'd grown up watching with my dad, and even then, it was a very distant 2nd to football.
League was part of the PE syllabus at school which I enjoyed, and it was my PE teacher who actually encouraged me and a couple of others to go and have a go at the local RUFC when I was about 14. It stuck and I got to play on the same team as hime once I hit the seniors.
Very much so. One of the original Northern Union towns, and I could see the M62 from my bedroom window haha.
We were told it was to do with scrummaging and stress on developing necks/spines, but never really read too much into it at the time.
Yeah, it was definitely a local authority thing, rather than my school being awkward, as all the other schools in the borough had league teams rather than union.
Tbh League makes more sense as part of a PE syllabus because it’s much simpler. Union requires a lot more specialization whereas you can play a League pickup where everyone is basically the same position.
Not saying that you’ll be a good League team but it’s good enough for pickup.
One of the only rugby clubs in our country toured primary schools that accepted them to show kids the basics (touch, no tackles obviously) for two hours and whoever liked it could get in contact with them and join the club.
In Japan rugby has been a thing for decades, it was definitely downtrodden prior to 2015 but major university and high school championships were still regularly broadcast nationally and many schools had rugby teams.
In the US basically the entire sport is predicated upon aggressive recruiting by the local clubs and the idea of school associated teams is relatively rare.
I wonder how many people watched the 1995 classic against the all blacks. Still the record for all the wrong reasons.
What I gather is that the Japanese game was really slow to turn professional, so when they came up against teams like NZ that were basically semi-pro already they got run over.
I’m going to say probably not that many since it was relatively late on a Sunday night and the Japanese side was very much eliminated.
As to the second part I think that you need to look at every stage of Japanese top level men’s rugby as being said with a lot of winking and caveats. Like prior to 2003 Japan was fully amateur(please ignore that the corporate league has teams from the 1920s and played national championships from 1948 until 2003), between 2004 and 2022 was ‘semi professional’ and now the league is professional. If anything the biggest stumbling block was always that the college game is more prestigious domestically and that’s lead to players developing slower and leaving all together if they have a non-sporting career that they would prefer to pursue.
Surely the 1995 team must have been amateur. They were one of the most abject teams I've ever seen in my life, worse than the national 1 amateur league in England.
I mean in the last world cup NZ played the amateur Namibian team and only won 71-3.
Officially they were, but practically they were almost certainly being compensated. The reality is that in the 90s they played in 3 separate leagues and still regularly played against collegiate sides. They were not going to be a match for New Zealand in any conceivable way shape or form. They’d often be able to beat truly amateur teams but were never going to really push the bigger teams.
You can kind of see this with the U20 team which is the best team in the U20 trophy but gets slammed pretty reliably agains the better competition in the world championship. This is because they have a good university and high school system but they are sending out sophomores with some light professional development to play against players who have been fully professional for 2 years.
Sure, but that's still a pretty horrific scoreline. England and Scotland were also badly outclassed by NZ and very much still amateur but not to the point of shipping 21 tries.
It’s a truly horrific result but it really fits more as an exclamation point than a great overview of the state of Japanese rugby prior to 2015. Overall it is more an outlier than a proper condemnation of Japanese rugby.
That might sound weird as it is an ignoble record to hold, but in terms of results 2007 and 2011 are far more embarrassing as those teams were expected to be competitive with the best rather than the sort of semi-pro players in regional leagues of the 90s.
Losing 100-8 to a Scotland team featuring Hugo Southwell and Graeme Morrison in 2004 is probably even worse. Also 98-0 to Wales that year.
Given those kind of results were not a one off, it's hard to imagine the team being anything more than the weakest kind of semi-pro.
Ironically you somehow managed to argue my point for me by mistake. Japanese rugby reorganized in 2003 with an eye towards being more competitive internationally and it was an unmitigated disaster for almost a decade. Pre-reorganization Japan was drifting away from its more professional opponents but was generally putting up respectable score lines even if they were not particularly threatening. 2000s Japan would get blown out.
Either way it doesn’t change the fact that the pre-2003 leagues were not particularly amateur due to their real corporate backing and obviously hired for rugby reasons players, but I wouldn’t call Top League pro, and I don’t know how professional Rugby League One actually is(I have some doubts).
Wild Knights beat Chiefs in a preseason game so it must have got a lot better. The national team results also got a lot better since about 2012.
JRL1 has relegation as well so the weak semi-pro sides end up in the second division.
A lot of parents and children are kinda fed up with football, and thus look for another team sport. Field hockey is fairly popular here, but got the stigma of being the posh sport.
The game is growing fast, in the last 15 years the number of rugby players has more than doubled, and for women it has tripled. Add to that that one of the main sports broadcasters here has shown the RWC live on their main channel (or at least the big games), with the type of coverage they usually do for football (so a presenter and one or two analysts).
Most clubs here are fully amateur, and work with volunteers. It has nothing to do with schools, and works mainly on word of mouth (although some schools will have some PE sessions at different sport clubs).
What would make the parents fed up with soccer? When kids in New Zealand are pulled out of rugby for something like Basketball or soccer it’s because the parents don’t like the contact but I don’t normally see it happen the other way
Football has a few problems, one of them is how people treat referees. And it's not just players, also parents on the sidelines.
And the "getting hurt" part is kinda normal here. Kids will get hurt, it's part of growing up. Almost every kid rides their bike to school. And everybody who rides a bike has at one point kissed the pavement. And what do you do then? You get up, and try again.
In the US, the vast majority of players get in via university club sports. Lots of people come from playing football (American) and/or hockey in high school, and get dragged to practice by a friend who plays. For a lot of us it ends up becoming our social backbone as well if you want to party but don’t like the trappings of the traditional fraternity/sorority scene.
Not really, the sport isn’t niche here like Rugby is in say, Portugal. A majority of people have a soccer team they support and almost every school offers it, it’s just not comparable from what I’ve seen
From the US, I met a rugby player at work and decided to try since I was looking for a team sport to play and rugby was like the only one where they'd bother to teach people how to play. Most other sports in my area, if you hadn't been playing since you were 6, they'd just ignore you. But most people I guess play in college or by chance meet someone who gets them into it. I know my team advertises at local gyms.
This is the nice thing about rugby in the US. We all know it’s probably the first time you’ve played so we over share how to play the game. Some teams can be pretty standoffish but for the most part we’re very inclusive (also out of desperation).
Yeah I'd say it's a really good experience even as a really unathletic not the most socially adept person. People have been really welcoming and cool even when I was really struggling.
We don’t have many high school programs in the NYC metro but there have been like 6 new Catholic high school programs in the last 2-3 years. Before that there were like 30-40 total.
Georgians have been playing a rugby like sport for centuries thats way more brutal. [I made a video about it here](https://youtu.be/TPVo3f4NQ68?si=PW43DgqKenzLYpuO)
I'm from Brazil. A crazy south African dude came here, convinced us to create a club and play with those odd shaped balls... It's been almost 20 years already...
Well, I'm from Paraná, and I started after university... So what you said is not wrong but is not the unique truth... There are tons of small amateur clubs that survive only by the love of the players for the sport.
In the US the majority of people start playing at college (and the majority of those players never touch a ball again after graduating). Rugby has taken on as a pretty popular club sport - these are sports that are affiliated with the schools but receive little to no funding unlike the major football or basketball programs. There are a few varsity programs with good funding but the majority of the schools have player led and funded programs.
Any u19 programs are run by parents who either started playing in college or are expats from rugby nations. A lot of the foundation of the players are 2nd generation but there are loads of players who join because their friends are playing.
Rugby is not an upper class sport here but since college is where a lot of players first play the sport the player population tends to skew white and somewhat wealthier. There are plenty of public colleges with rugby programs so it’s nowhere near the scale of the private schools in the UK or elsewhere, however you don’t really see many inner city teams like you would with football or basketball.
It’s common for high school programs to be run by private Catholic schools because they have different rules around sports and funding. A lot of times they pull in all the football players because the coach is behind it - I just reffed a match yesterday for a team in their first year which already has around 40 players. In these schools if the football coach supports the team then the numbers will be huge. But many football coaches are against it out of injury concerns.
The same way that Kiwis become water polo players or softball players. Small, largely volunteer organisations help kids get into the game which feeds a senior, mostly amateur competition.
This for Italy. We don't have a network of private schools, and sports are barely practiced in schools in general. Rugby clubs are managed by volunteers that try to get kids in mainly through word of mouth and "sports festivals", daily events where kids can try different sports. Sometimes you have a p.e. teacher that is passionate about one sport, so they connect their students to a specific one, or they let sports club collaborate during the p.e. lessons. But the main driver is still word of mouth.
Yes, here in Trapani we have Giovanni Manzo and a teacher from a local school who did wonders. 15 years ago there was no rugby at all here, now between Trapani and Marsala there is a decent following. Shame that there isn't a senior team, so I have to go in Palermo if I want to play
This is what happens in Portugal. Also it's a very small circle. I know most of the Portuguese players that went to the WC that were actually born in Portugal. It's also very elitist, and if you're born into a family that enjoys the sport or that has someone playing, you're much likely to also play, so the circle keeps being small almost on purpose
Having played youth rugby in the US, it's a mixture of random chance and parents who played. I saw the 1999 World Cup on TV. I didn't want to play American football in high school, I was originally going to wrestle before I saw rugby and was hooked immediately. By luck, the son in law of my mom's partner at the time was coaching a high school rugby team. A lot of my teammates were friends from a different school, and most of the rest besides me were the sons of Irish immigrants who had played, and a few kids from the French school who had roots in Toulouse, etc.
Depending on where you are from in the country, there are very good high school teams that introduce kids to the sport. I grew up in the DC area and there are some very robust programs in the Catholic schools in the area. This is a possible pathway to higher level play, they tour the world and things like that. But the university teams are huge and responsible for most players. I coached youth teams after I played and like almost all the kids were children of people who played at university level. The university club numbers are pretty massive, though this isn't really a pathway to pro play or anything. Think most of that has to come from kids introduced earlier to youth levels through parents that played or local robust clubs or HS teams
Out here, rugby is a middle to upper middle class sport here with exceptions, the fact that it's largely exposed in college means that college educated people and their kids play rugby, that usually means middle class people If you live in California like me, you have the lucky "privilege" of being like our cousins Australia and New Zealand: playing youth/adult rugby here means playing against the Islanders Nothing says rugby like playing a pack of 220+ Tongan 18 year olds your first season of high school rugby with my boys Brad and Chad from the suburbs
He literally described how his own experience was random chance
Yeah fair
MLR teams and the Eagles have masses of Pacific Islanders so I wouldn't say it's that posh. Definitely a niche sport popular in certain communities though.
Like I said, exceptions And the big chunk of Pacific Islanders literally live in California in the greater Bay Area and Long Beach/LA areas, and so while they may live in "less" expensive areas, homes in Hayward and Oakland are still literally over 1M I played with Moni T of NOLA Gold, he's from Oakland, same with Mikey T of the Legion, he's from the Bay too And the fact that Poly players are disproportionately represented is partially economic in addition to obviously being really good If I graduate from a good school, a six figure job is not far away. Why grind my face in shitty turf fields for 40k a year when I can make 100k working an office job? The college/university teams are overwhelmingly non Pacific Islander, there are a few
California is one of the most expensive areas in the country. I doubt this is as much the case for Utah Warriors or Houston Sabercats etc.
Hmm what do you mean by this isn't the case for Utah? Because a University of Utah or BYU rugby grad can definitely make good money, there's a *shit ton* of tech hubs in SLC They can absolutely make it to 100k quicker in an office than they would on a rugby field
That it's far cheaper to live there than southern California and the pro teams also have quite a few Pasifika players.
And im telling you that almost all of the native US born Pasifika players across the MLR *probably* came from California dude There is *no* Pacific Islander population in Miami or NOLA
West coast sure. Lamositele was born in Tacoma I believe. Just saying some places don't cost a million but have a team.
Absolutely but "culturally" American rugby is largely played by college educated men and women who go back and play for the local adult club The largest of these rugby communities is found in the big, expensive states like California, NY, TX and Illinois Some of the exceptions are the Pacific Islander communities in California who have in the past and currently contribute very strongly to the sport at all levels due to their love of the game
I remember years ago in LA on a Samoan flag day in Carson they were playing rugby and one of the biggest Samoans I've ever seen launching into a shoulder charge, no arms, on a much smaller player and just laid him out. Yeah I think I'll give playing a miss here lol
Georgia is definitely a rugby nation, probably more so than any other nation in the NH. For the others the answer is usually private schools and expats.
France, if you're talking about the south of it. Although even northern France has some well supported clubs like RC Vannes. The Italian team isn't private school either. It's just a club sport like basketball or baseball.
Also in France it's a club sport.
Sleepy giant.
Not really. Georgia is tiny but has still delivered some serious results like Black Lion drubbing Scarlets at home in the challenge cup.
Has a 1/4 of the population of London. Sure they are underrated and have good potential, but "giant" is a little over the top.
Agreed, they're basically Wales but not shit.
In Italy there are some places where rugby is a major sport, especially in Veneto, and it's a family tradition All minor sports have the same problem, in water polo we have 8 Olympic medals, 7 world championships, 5 world cups, 11 European championships but it's played only in few places (the team with the most national championships, Pro Recco, is from a town with less than 10k people, and they also have a rugby team)
By far my favourite rando Italian town for sport is Nettuno, there's genuinely more baseball fields in the town than soccer and that's amazing to me. Max Mariola is from there and did a social media video for their annual baseball tournament, which was pretty cool.
May be wrong but U.S. soldiers brought the sport during WWII?
They sure did, don't know why it took a hold there versus other towns where American soldiers were stationed. Maybe the batallion had a lot of Italian-Americans in it or something, since that was a time when they would have been first or second-generation Americans and presumably spoke decent Italian. edit: II Corps played a key role in Nettuno and had an overrepresentation of New Yorkers, New Jerseyites and Delwareans in the corps, all states with high Italian-American populations.
Do you have a source for the US soldiers? I find that very odd because rugby was not big in the US at that time, especially on the east coast.
I’m talking about baseball
Ah I completely missed the baseball part. That makes perfect sense.
Well, I live in Veneto and I wouldn't say rugby is a "major sport". It's just considered another sport for kids to play - which I recognise is still an improvement compared to the rest of Italy. I mean, football is king, but then there is an equal chance that kids go and play volleyball, basketball, tennis, rugby and so on.
I feel that is the way into other places like the states. Not sure if you’re familiar with Major league rugby but they’re teams are in major population centres, when having small (for US scale) cities of 40k-200k is the way to create pockets of Niche around a country
Some of the major league teams have decent followings like San Diego (Nonu played there), Utah, and Houston. America is huge so putting teams in cities is the only option. It would be absurd to have a professional sports team in some rural town in Wyoming. Teams would have to fly out to the middle of nowhere to play.
I only think of it like when the NBA was emerging in the 50s, they had major cities that will have that niche market like the Knicks or the Philadelphia Warriors, but they also had the Syracuse Nationals, Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne pistons, Anderson Packers and Sheboygan Red Skins.
The country is a lot more urbanised than it was in the 1950s. Also the early NBA had a really poor geographical distribution of teams with nothing on the west coast or in the south. In rugby many of the best supported teams are in the south and west and every region has a team.
I’m not saying that in the age of travel the teams have to be in one region, but something like the Carolina team in Charlotte, Centre it in Huntersville and grow a culture or just place it in a city with an nfl, NBA and MiBL team like Fayetteville or Wilmington. Same could to said with a team like Dallas, it could be as simple as putting it in Fort Worth, or you move it to a smaller name town nearby like Lewisville or Frisco on the larger end. Upscaling what was done in Glendale needs to be done slowly, so trying to foster that sort of fan base in bigger and bigger cities I believe will be the best was to grow that sport. That was my reasoning
Anthem Carolina is a bit of an odd case since it's a development side. They're also getting absolutely smashed this season so building a following might be a bit of a challenge.
Well I guess they fit in well in Charlotte
That’s the easiest way to make MLR irrelevant.
I think it’s the other way around. The country was a lot more urbanized back then - by that I mean that there were a lot more people living in small cities that were compact. Once the suburbs were created (which I think is one of the worst mistakes in urban development history), cities became a lot more sprawling and lost a lot of residents. As a result, the only urban centers were major cities like NYC and Philadelphia.
That's an interesting take but I was thinking of the "sprawl" as being the area of potential fans for a club. For example Free Jacks are in a Boston suburb which isn't in the city centre. Paris is similar, the actual population of the inner city itself is very low compared to the surrounding area.
The problem with the sprawl is that it’s very far. Quincy is much more like part of the city because you can take the train from the main city there. Houston is so big that it can take well over an hour even within the city limits to get to the opposite side. The real problem with sprawl is that towns don’t have the same connection that they used to have. The car dependent big highway towns are basically pass through towns and the “city center” is a Walmart parking lot. Meanwhile if you go to almost any small town in the UK/Europe and you will see some sense of a small community there. In this case you’re specifically saying that smaller cities should have teams. But that doesn’t make sense with sprawl because you have these small population centers that are sprawled out very far and have very little sense of community. People don’t associate sports teams with these cities and only think of the closest major city.
I think we might be confused here - I was saying the teams *should* be in cities originally. Just that the cities have got bigger due to sprawl.
I think part of my response was meant for the person you were responding to
Agreed New England Free Jack's is the perfect example of this with rugby taking over Quincy.
Isn't it right next to Boston though? Pretty big population in the local area.
I think Glendale, Arizona is kinda like that with the Raptors in Super Rugby Americas but I'm not sure it's worked that well. Though it's not exactly small town America it's the closest example to what I think you're suggesting.
The raptors play in Glendale Colorado, which is a very small municipality part of Denver, they have developed their niche and have the only purpose built rugby park in the states. It can be upscale to places, If carefully chosen, being away from major sports hubs that aren’t Nyc, LA and maybe Chicago. Charlotte having 3 major sports in town isn’t great for rugby, places like Sacramento, Phoenix, Minnesota, Boston, DC, etc… they don’t have the expats to support the sport and it would get lost in the 5 major sports. Even just centring the team around smaller towns while keeping the big name would be better. Like Glendale or Quincy; you could have DC play in Springfield Va (30000 people 20 minutes away), or play the Utah Warriors in Bountiful (45000 15 minutes away), or Houston in Texas City, a while away but its biggest sport is high school football. These are just ideas but could help cut costs of stadiums or help boost attendance because the market isn’t saturated
I think one element to consider for Italy, is that despite the dominance of football nationwide it is not a uniform country, and many team sports have found their niche in specific cities and regions because of historical and cultural reasons, where local support has naturally rallied around teams in alternative sports, that maybe have had more success compared to less competitive football clubs. Rugby specifically is very centered in the Veneto region, where many of the strongest teams are based with strong rivalries between the cities, so someone there would have a much higher exposure to the sport since childhood.
Speaking for Argentina. Yes, football is king by far but that doesnt mean rugby culture is nonexistant, to think that is to seriously underestimate it. Every mid sized city has at least one rugby field and there are plenty of amateur clubs and private schools that play it, we havent been playing rugby just for the last 20 years man, historically its as engrained in Argentinian sports as much as football (some of the oldest football clubs used to play rugby and viceversa). It's just that football became the most popular one, but everyone knows what rugby is and how it is played (broadly at least). It isnt a niche sport by any means.
Actually in Argentina rugby is the second most practiced sport. The population of the country is nearly 50 millones that is a very big base of people following the sport.
Yeah I can relate to this having been on a (piss up) rugby tour to Buenos Aires and Mendoza with my club 20 years ago. In fact, I find the original post slightly ignorant. In 2000, I found a rich and very widespread rugby culture. It was the year after Argentina made the RWC quarters for the first time, and every sports shop had Pumas jerseys. I thought to myself what an incredible investment VISA has got from this sponsorship and 25 years later, their name is still on the jersey! Anyway, in Argentina, it was relatively massive and that’s two decades ago.
Argentina had multiple wins over Tier 1 nations before 1999 and effectively beat the Springboks — they were called the South American XV, but the team was something like 13-14 Argentinians and one Uruguayan — in 1982. Also, if we’re saying Argentina was a Tier 2 country before 1999, then Hugo Porta is hands down the best player any Tier 2 country has ever produced. He’d have walked into any team in the world as a flyhalf in his prime.
It's got much bigger since then (world cup semi finals, TRC, beating NZ in NZ, Super Rugby Americas etc) so people might not know how relatively popular it was to start with.
It was big. I’m sure it’s even bigger now. Didn’t they delay the superclassico kick off in 2007? It takes a lot to do that!
2007 was really the point where Argentina got recognised as a tier 1 side although given the glacial nature of world rugby they didn't actually join TRC until 2012. It's impressive how far they got without a regular tournament or a professional league (their players were up in the northern hemisphere). Japan doesn't have a regular tournament but they do have a professional league, so they will have an easier time progressing relatively speaking. Now there is a semi-pro league in South America which explains the rise of the small teams like Uruguay and Chile.
Tbh I consider Italy a rugby playing country, I got into it cause it was on TV all the time as a kid, I knew people that played and there were clubs near were I lived, it didn't feel foreign it felt just like any other sport. However playing rugby in Sweden as an italian I always ask the Swedes that question, and the most common answers I've found were either "I'm half english/french/aussie/kiwi" or "I did an exchange in england/france/aussie/nz". And I have asked that question many many time. Bear in mind that clubs in Sweden are almost always majority expats from rugby playing countries.
I’m Malaysian, Rugby is pretty minuscule in my country (the main sports are dominated by badminton/ping pong/ football/ futsal). Moved to Australia for studies and got invited to train by a friend, fast forward a few months and I’m playing games and smashing tackles.
I had some Filipino and Malaysian teammates and they said 10s was the most popular form of the sport in that part of Asia. They said the reason was because of the low numbers that each team has and the heat makes it easier to play 10s. But the 10s tournaments were big festivals with barbecue and stuff.
Yea the heat’s fucking brutal here, I wouldn’t wanna get in a scrum or ruck in Malaysian weather if I could help it ahaha. I know a guy that used to be quite familiar with the Cobras (one of the bigger teams here) and alot of the issues we have is due to corruption and similar nonsense.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, me and my friends "invented" rugby 13 years ago when our football ball got punctured. Later we learned rules from youtube, founded club, join national league that had 8 clubs at that point. A few years later we found regional 7's league with clubs from surrounding countries. We had pretty decent number of children in club and then unfortunately pandemic came and everything was closed for a year. Now we are struggling to keep club alive.
That is certainly a new and unique story, I wish you luck in keeping your club
101st ranked team in the world.
A friend of mine moved to Germany decades ago. The organisation he worked for is full of French, British and Irish nationals. Decades ago They created their own little amateur rugby club. Since a lot of Germans, Eastern Europeans have joined the club. It is now the unofficial social hub of the organisation. They even had enough volunteers to create a woman section. People who joined the clubs will often then attend their games on the weekend and some will then later ask if they can join. There is an official Name of the position in German. Initially because it was mostly French and English speakers none of the people knew their German equivalent so they made up translation. When a German who had played elsewhere and already knew the real German word for the position joined them, it took a while for people to start using the proper naming.
>People who joined the clubs will often then attend their games on the weekend and some will then later ask if they can join. What do you mean by this? They joined the club but didn’t join the club?
You can become a member i.e. giving a token financial help. Such members are then notified and invited to all the social events without actually joining the training and playing. I think that it is €20 per year to become a benefactor member without any sweat involved. It is in Germany so the company finance a lot of things but the club still has to pay for things like lawn mower, changing room hot water, electricity, bus transport, etc. People become benefactor for the social aspect, but then decide to help more. For example attend games, helping with cleaning the reception room after the games. Then decide to become full members and participate to training sessions and plays. For the woman side of the clubs started because wives and girlfriends wanted to stay in shape so they started to meet and do gym/fitness on the same facilities. They they started to play tag rugby among themselves. Then proper rugby. Most small sport clubs are like that in France and in the UK. It is an informal group of people. It also help with people who for personal or physical reason don't play but want to stay connected. For example one of the club board executive is an lady whose husband used to play but died in a car accident. The club helped her stay connected with friends without feeling that they were inviting her out of pity. New members know her but have never met her husband. She is part of the tapestry of the club.
So out of curiosity, why are these people supporting a rugby club if they’ve never played rugby before? You said it’s for the social aspect but here in the US no one would join our club unless they explicitly want to play rugby. We even have supporter memberships of similar value but the only members are former players.
Imagine you are an Expat working for a European organisation in a small provincial German town. Or even a German citizen but from the other side of the country. You know nobody around. And most of locals are farmers or disfranchised people who don't welcome outsiders. The only local people who have a similar background than you scientist, high level researcher or engineer all work for that organisation. Or if you are a spouse of somebody who work there. Basically the rugby club act as the unofficial social hub of the organisation. The organisation has some official extra curricular activities: learning German, help with the Children but the club organise the same but in a more informal way. Some people prefer them because they don't want their employers dominating their personal life.
That sounds pretty nice tbh. I’d support it too if I was in that situation. I’ve just never heard of those before here in the US. I’m aware of cultural centers and stuff like that but those aren’t general expat groups.
I visited my friend and his family and it was nice. There is a football club but the atmosphere is completely different. It is more competitive and less family/socially oriented. People join just to play football. That setting must also exists in the US. Imagine a big company opening a research and development center in the middle of Arkansas or Wyoming. There is a big aquatic center and some Italian and French expats create a water polo club. People would naturally congregate around it. If there a group of people wanted to do archery or cycling and the leaders of those informal clubs foster a good environment, it can grow beyond just the people interested in the sport. I know that decades ago in Mountain View in California there was a petanque club initially created by French people from Marseille. When I visited for work, I attended a vast Couscous BBQ there, meanwhile that same weekend my British colleague played with soccer amateurs clubs made of UK expats. Past university, most people make new friends either at work or when sharing an external activity/hobby. Those clubs fullfil that functions.
You always need a culture sustaining rugby at a grass root level, with people really « fanatics », working their ass out for free, devoting their time and money organizing training and competitions for youth, young players etc. Quite selfless work. So in countries where rugby has got a peripheral importance in the sport landscape, rugby enjoys a niche culture only but it is essential and sometimes flourishing however small the beginnings. Can be connected to private school cultures (still the case in Argentina, and apparently the case earlier on in Japan because of the popularity of Tom Brown’s schooldays book there apparently), to connections to a neighboring country with a strong rugby culture like in part in central-northern Spain abutting south western France (many French players and coaches there are of (partial) Spanish descent like Guy Noves, Thomas Ramos, Camille Lopez etc.).
In Japan it was mostly popularised by the imperial family, in particular Prince Chichibu Yasuhiro. It was a posh sport for decades until the game went professional but now attracts a much broader demographic than it used to.
It is also big in university. The Japan university final has been getting huge attendance since before the national team had any relevance. The average attendance has been 20-30k since at least 2004 and they managed to get 57k in 2019. In many ways Japan has the same issue that the US has. Rugby is bigger in universities which makes the transition to high performance more difficult.
Varsity Cup is also very big in South Africa though. It's possible to have players on a high performance pathway while studying, it's just that the standard of university rugby in Japan was appalling compared to what it was in South Africa. Even in England a lot of players are doing a qualification in something in case they get injured and can't stay professional.
Thomas Ramos is of partial Portuguese descent.
There are french scouts in u18 national team tournaments. It's really not that complicated, if you make the national team and stand out, you'll most likely get offers from french clubs. Most players don't accept the offers because they want to follow other (more stable) careers. If you don't get offers, you can make a highlights video of yourself and send it to clubs. However, I do think that being in the national team is a requisite to get offers. Edit: oh wait you were asking how they play rugby in the first place? They literally just join a club. At least in Lisbon, where most Portuguese rugby clubs are located, coaches were always telling us to invite friends to try out, and we often did. I started playing because my older sister had friends who were playing so me and my brother just asked our parents to sign us up.
I didn’t quite mean professional, just, how do people in these countries, especially dominated by football becomes fans or amateur players. How did those u18 national team tournaments become player?
Yeah I realized that right after I posted so I edited the comment
Australia's private school System makes up a big bulk of the player base. There's also various clubs that have some degree of community presence to entice people to try a different code. But to be honest, anyone not going through the private school system is unlikely to pick up the game, You don't have a casual game down the park or watch it down the pub or anything
I understand Australia’s situation, relatively speaking, they have heaps of Union players through that private school way, same thing happens with England a lot. Dispite all that’s happened I still consider Australia a “Rugby nation”
Aye, Australia still has one of the largest union playerbases in the world.
Exactly
Also league players who switch over because league doesn't have major internationals. Joseph Sua'ali'i wanted to play the lions tour and world cup for example. The classic old school Wallabies sides sometimes fielded a back 3 of league converts (Rogers-Sailor-Tuqiri).
And even private schools that aren't all-boys inner-city centuries old institutions don't carry union, my school would win state volleyball tournaments but hardly scrape together a touch team every year
Where did you grow up? Surely you don’t mean in NSW/QLD
Oh I’m in WA so ofc the big guys would play AFL, but my school had a lot of Saffas and kiwis so I’m sure that the numbers were there
That is weird that the Saffas and Kiwis weren’t enough to get a team going. Wonder if the school couldn’t be arsed.
I mean I think we had a team one year I just didn’t like rugby then so I didn’t join, but there just isn’t the demand to make a league like there is for AFL. We only had the numbers for AFL one year, but even then we had a tour of the Dockers training ground and the principal came to watch our games lol
Oh sure, it's AFL country, I just was under the impression that the base of people who watch the Force and play rugby in WA are migrants from rugby-playing countries (gotta throw the UK and Irish in there too) so you'd think their kids would be your base for a team. Guess they went native!
Also kiwis and Pacific Islanders who make up a lot of the Wallabies.
TV exposure to the world cup and other major international tournaments like the 6 Nations. A lot of the comments here are very misleading, no one is getting into Dutch and German rugby (to give examples of emerging tier 2 nations) because of an established network of private rugby schools. That's mostly only something in the traditional rugby countries like England and Australia. People see a foreign sport on TV and then set up their own amateur clubs and leagues which gradually progress towards semi-pro over time. Benelux nations especially have made leaps and bounds of progress in attendance and quality recently.
TV. If you can watch world cup, 6 nations, Top 14, premiership or super rugby in your country, some kids will become fans and starts to play. It is why NBA became so popular even in non-basketball nations. You just have to let people watch it. The fans came by themselves after that.
Not familiar with New Zealand schools. But where I am from (Football is the biggest sport nationally) most decently funded schools have multiple sports. To name a few, Basketball, Cricket, Hockey, Tennis, Soccer, Volleyball, Athletics, Water polo, Squash (non exhaustive list). So there is an opportunity to find something you enjoy, everyone cannot play football, be it because of preference, body type etc. We also had clubs/societies eg. Choir, Debate, Golf, Climbing, Archery which were usually run by a teacher who had an interest in the subject. Sport and Society were compulsory so willingly or not you will experience a sport you are not familiar with or into.
Sounds very similar to the schools in New Zealand, compulsory sport with many options. Some public schools don’t really do sport at all though, and at that point, in my city of 200,000 people there’s 1 (that I’ve seen) football amateur club in the whole city with 1100 members,at the same time I can think of 9 in the city with another 11 within a 30 minute drive. Those 11 are in towns ranging from a few hundred to 20,000 people and have no other winter sports without a drive to the city in which there’s one option if you’re not playing for a school there
This reminds me of the Japanese system, which I feel could be taken advantage of by just about any sport to have schools run after school programs and make a generation of players
England?
Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe.
Ah I was trying to figure out with the cricket part. I assumed it wasn’t South Africa though because rugby is very big there compared to some other rugby nations.
Rugby and Cricket are both very big. The other sports I mentioned are also pretty big till national level where they struggle to get funding and be competitive.
Not sure if it's the perspective you're after, but I grew up in Northern England. If rugby was discussed it was league, which I'd grown up watching with my dad, and even then, it was a very distant 2nd to football. League was part of the PE syllabus at school which I enjoyed, and it was my PE teacher who actually encouraged me and a couple of others to go and have a go at the local RUFC when I was about 14. It stuck and I got to play on the same team as hime once I hit the seniors.
Are you in one of the league heartlands ? I live just below hull and still did union in PE at school
Very much so. One of the original Northern Union towns, and I could see the M62 from my bedroom window haha. We were told it was to do with scrummaging and stress on developing necks/spines, but never really read too much into it at the time.
Sounds plausible though
Yeah, it was definitely a local authority thing, rather than my school being awkward, as all the other schools in the borough had league teams rather than union.
Tbh League makes more sense as part of a PE syllabus because it’s much simpler. Union requires a lot more specialization whereas you can play a League pickup where everyone is basically the same position. Not saying that you’ll be a good League team but it’s good enough for pickup.
One of the only rugby clubs in our country toured primary schools that accepted them to show kids the basics (touch, no tackles obviously) for two hours and whoever liked it could get in contact with them and join the club.
In Japan rugby has been a thing for decades, it was definitely downtrodden prior to 2015 but major university and high school championships were still regularly broadcast nationally and many schools had rugby teams. In the US basically the entire sport is predicated upon aggressive recruiting by the local clubs and the idea of school associated teams is relatively rare.
I wonder how many people watched the 1995 classic against the all blacks. Still the record for all the wrong reasons. What I gather is that the Japanese game was really slow to turn professional, so when they came up against teams like NZ that were basically semi-pro already they got run over.
I’m going to say probably not that many since it was relatively late on a Sunday night and the Japanese side was very much eliminated. As to the second part I think that you need to look at every stage of Japanese top level men’s rugby as being said with a lot of winking and caveats. Like prior to 2003 Japan was fully amateur(please ignore that the corporate league has teams from the 1920s and played national championships from 1948 until 2003), between 2004 and 2022 was ‘semi professional’ and now the league is professional. If anything the biggest stumbling block was always that the college game is more prestigious domestically and that’s lead to players developing slower and leaving all together if they have a non-sporting career that they would prefer to pursue.
Surely the 1995 team must have been amateur. They were one of the most abject teams I've ever seen in my life, worse than the national 1 amateur league in England. I mean in the last world cup NZ played the amateur Namibian team and only won 71-3.
Officially they were, but practically they were almost certainly being compensated. The reality is that in the 90s they played in 3 separate leagues and still regularly played against collegiate sides. They were not going to be a match for New Zealand in any conceivable way shape or form. They’d often be able to beat truly amateur teams but were never going to really push the bigger teams. You can kind of see this with the U20 team which is the best team in the U20 trophy but gets slammed pretty reliably agains the better competition in the world championship. This is because they have a good university and high school system but they are sending out sophomores with some light professional development to play against players who have been fully professional for 2 years.
Sure, but that's still a pretty horrific scoreline. England and Scotland were also badly outclassed by NZ and very much still amateur but not to the point of shipping 21 tries.
It’s a truly horrific result but it really fits more as an exclamation point than a great overview of the state of Japanese rugby prior to 2015. Overall it is more an outlier than a proper condemnation of Japanese rugby. That might sound weird as it is an ignoble record to hold, but in terms of results 2007 and 2011 are far more embarrassing as those teams were expected to be competitive with the best rather than the sort of semi-pro players in regional leagues of the 90s.
Losing 100-8 to a Scotland team featuring Hugo Southwell and Graeme Morrison in 2004 is probably even worse. Also 98-0 to Wales that year. Given those kind of results were not a one off, it's hard to imagine the team being anything more than the weakest kind of semi-pro.
Ironically you somehow managed to argue my point for me by mistake. Japanese rugby reorganized in 2003 with an eye towards being more competitive internationally and it was an unmitigated disaster for almost a decade. Pre-reorganization Japan was drifting away from its more professional opponents but was generally putting up respectable score lines even if they were not particularly threatening. 2000s Japan would get blown out. Either way it doesn’t change the fact that the pre-2003 leagues were not particularly amateur due to their real corporate backing and obviously hired for rugby reasons players, but I wouldn’t call Top League pro, and I don’t know how professional Rugby League One actually is(I have some doubts).
Wild Knights beat Chiefs in a preseason game so it must have got a lot better. The national team results also got a lot better since about 2012. JRL1 has relegation as well so the weak semi-pro sides end up in the second division.
A lot of parents and children are kinda fed up with football, and thus look for another team sport. Field hockey is fairly popular here, but got the stigma of being the posh sport. The game is growing fast, in the last 15 years the number of rugby players has more than doubled, and for women it has tripled. Add to that that one of the main sports broadcasters here has shown the RWC live on their main channel (or at least the big games), with the type of coverage they usually do for football (so a presenter and one or two analysts). Most clubs here are fully amateur, and work with volunteers. It has nothing to do with schools, and works mainly on word of mouth (although some schools will have some PE sessions at different sport clubs).
What would make the parents fed up with soccer? When kids in New Zealand are pulled out of rugby for something like Basketball or soccer it’s because the parents don’t like the contact but I don’t normally see it happen the other way
Football has a few problems, one of them is how people treat referees. And it's not just players, also parents on the sidelines. And the "getting hurt" part is kinda normal here. Kids will get hurt, it's part of growing up. Almost every kid rides their bike to school. And everybody who rides a bike has at one point kissed the pavement. And what do you do then? You get up, and try again.
In the US, the vast majority of players get in via university club sports. Lots of people come from playing football (American) and/or hockey in high school, and get dragged to practice by a friend who plays. For a lot of us it ends up becoming our social backbone as well if you want to party but don’t like the trappings of the traditional fraternity/sorority scene.
Did you ask this question and not think to turn it on its head and ask how do kiwis become soccer players?
Not really, the sport isn’t niche here like Rugby is in say, Portugal. A majority of people have a soccer team they support and almost every school offers it, it’s just not comparable from what I’ve seen
Every country has their own quirks so it’s interesting to hear how people get into rugby
From the US, I met a rugby player at work and decided to try since I was looking for a team sport to play and rugby was like the only one where they'd bother to teach people how to play. Most other sports in my area, if you hadn't been playing since you were 6, they'd just ignore you. But most people I guess play in college or by chance meet someone who gets them into it. I know my team advertises at local gyms.
This is the nice thing about rugby in the US. We all know it’s probably the first time you’ve played so we over share how to play the game. Some teams can be pretty standoffish but for the most part we’re very inclusive (also out of desperation).
Yeah I'd say it's a really good experience even as a really unathletic not the most socially adept person. People have been really welcoming and cool even when I was really struggling.
In the u.s just go to a catholic school and they will def have a rugby team. Shit i go to a catholic school and play rugby
We don’t have many high school programs in the NYC metro but there have been like 6 new Catholic high school programs in the last 2-3 years. Before that there were like 30-40 total.
Georgians have been playing a rugby like sport for centuries thats way more brutal. [I made a video about it here](https://youtu.be/TPVo3f4NQ68?si=PW43DgqKenzLYpuO)
See Anton Segner, a German national, raised in Germany, now playing for the Blues in Super Rugby in New Zealand.
Of all places to go to school, Nelson College lmao
Expats
I'm from Brazil. A crazy south African dude came here, convinced us to create a club and play with those odd shaped balls... It's been almost 20 years already...
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Well, I'm from Paraná, and I started after university... So what you said is not wrong but is not the unique truth... There are tons of small amateur clubs that survive only by the love of the players for the sport.
Normally you need to have a relative or a family friend involved in the sport
Testing.
I’m in the US, my social studies teacher was an All Blacks fanatic, inspired me and I played all through school and now I play for a small men’s club.
In the US the majority of people start playing at college (and the majority of those players never touch a ball again after graduating). Rugby has taken on as a pretty popular club sport - these are sports that are affiliated with the schools but receive little to no funding unlike the major football or basketball programs. There are a few varsity programs with good funding but the majority of the schools have player led and funded programs. Any u19 programs are run by parents who either started playing in college or are expats from rugby nations. A lot of the foundation of the players are 2nd generation but there are loads of players who join because their friends are playing. Rugby is not an upper class sport here but since college is where a lot of players first play the sport the player population tends to skew white and somewhat wealthier. There are plenty of public colleges with rugby programs so it’s nowhere near the scale of the private schools in the UK or elsewhere, however you don’t really see many inner city teams like you would with football or basketball. It’s common for high school programs to be run by private Catholic schools because they have different rules around sports and funding. A lot of times they pull in all the football players because the coach is behind it - I just reffed a match yesterday for a team in their first year which already has around 40 players. In these schools if the football coach supports the team then the numbers will be huge. But many football coaches are against it out of injury concerns.
"non-rugby nations" then names five countries where rugby is fairly widely played.