| October
18, 2005 – A little less than a week ago the Santa Monica Rugby
club, national DI champions and source club for a number of
internationals, including recent Eagle Jurie Gouws and Kain
Cross, sent out an open letter to USA Rugby protesting potential
changes in men's club eligibility rules.
The letter has since
been co-signed in support by:
Austin Blacks, Dallas RFC, Charlotte Olde Originals, Chicago
Griffins, Hayward Griffins, Kansas City Rugby Football Club,
Maryland Exiles, Mystic River, Northern Virginia, Pittsburgh
Harlequins, San Mateo, Schuylkill River Exiles, The Woodlands.
The
letter is printed to the right, and we will make our comments
here on the left.
The
changes deal with two issues: movement of players in and out
of Super League clubs, and limits on foreign-born players.
The
proposal before the USA Rugby Board would allow any club player
to remain a member of a club while also declaring a Super
League club affiliation. If the player makes the Super League
club, he plays for the RSL team. If he does not make the RSL
team, he is free to go back to his regular DI, DII, or DIII
club. And during the season, the movement door remains open.
The player can be asked to go back to the RSL team if, for
example, there's an injury, but playing in the Super League
does not affect his lower division eligibility.
According
to the Santa Monica letter, this plan means the clubs are
propping up the Super League, and will mean the end of club
rugby. I disagree, and in fact am surprised more clubs
don't see this as a positive thing, because it is.
First
of all: this is about player freedom. A rugby player
in America is not (except for very few exceptions) a professional.
He is an amateur and as such has no contractual obligation
to play for any particular club. Yet the current rules mean
a player who decides he might want to try to play Super League
has to wait a full year before he can make that move.
Consider
a hypothetical player: Harry. Harry was a former DII football
player and now plays for Old Gaels in Northern California.
He doesn't know anything about the club structure in rugby.
He is just learning the game. But he's athletic and strong
and is told with some work he'd make a fine flanker ... He
learns about the Super League, which, he understands, is a
completely different competition from DI or DII in Northern
California. He wants to try it out. Sorry Harry. He is told
it's either the Old Gaels (sorry to pick on you, guys) or
nothing. He cannot switch until next year.
Shouldn't
a player who wants to play at a higher level be allowed to
try? His absence from the Gaels hurts no one except, possible,
the Gaels. His arrival in the Super League isn't going to
upset the delicate balance. In fact, the horrible irony of
this is that overseas players can come into Super League teams
in the middle of the season with no restrictions. We
just like to shackle our local players.
Opening
up that avenue is good for the clubs. They can tell a player
he has the option to pursue Super League if he wants,
and if it doesn't work out (hates the coach, won't get much
playing time, can't take the travel) he can still come back
to his DI or DII teams and play meaningful rugby.
(Hey
Alex, how would you feel if your star player left your club
to play somewhere else? Actually, it's happened twice to the
little DIII club I used to run, and both times I said "Good
luck" to that player and wished him the best. One made
a Super League team, and we were very proud of him. Why did
we feel that way? Because we didn't own him.)
This
plan wouldn't deplete DI clubs. What it will deplete, I am
quite sure, is Super League B teams.
The
Santa Monica letter addresses the idea that this plan will
help the national team. In a long-term sense, it might. The
idea is that a young player who wants to challenge himself
should be allowed that opportunity and not have to wait a
year to move to another level.
It
would, possibly, concentrate more of the most talented players
into a single competition, which we would all agree would
raise the standard.
The
Santa Monica letter instead thinks two things that are opposite
to each other: 1) The Super League is a burden and obscenely
expensive to participate in and 2) More teams should be in
it.
The
Santa Monica letter wants a 24-32 team league where they play
pool games on a regional basis. The plan outlined therein
would give teams 4-6 games before playoffs and far less travel.
We tried that. It was called Major League Rugby. It didn't
work. Why? Because teams were scheduled against clubs they
play anyway. The clubs looked at it and said "we could
do this ourselves." And expanding to many more clubs
increased exponentially the likelihood that some clubs wouldn't
even show up to play, which happened in MLR.
You
don't raise the level of a competition by bringing in more
players. You raise the talent level, or reduce the number
of players involved.
One
area where I agree on restricting player movement is between
college and Super League. Here I'd like to at least make it
that a player's college season must be over before they switch
to Super League.
Foreign
players. I agree with Santa Monica entirely on this. American
rugby still needs to restrict foreign-born players but not
everyone thinks the same way.
Allowing
rugby players to declare a Super League affiliation will not
destroy the clubs. A Super League team has only a limited
roster, after all. Some very good players will decide not
to play Super League because their work precludes it, or they
like their DI club too much, or their DI competition is, like
in Southern California, very strong.
Currently
the system allows a player to switch from lower divisions
to Super League teams before the New Year. We see this happen
in the East and Midwest, where players play DI in the fall
and then switch for the spring. Have clubs fallen apart? On
the contrary, DI and DII competitions are much stronger, overall,
in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest than they are
in Northern California, Pacific Northwest, or West.
With 16 Super League
teams, that makes 352 roster spots on any given weekend. How
many players do you think these DI teams are going to give
up? 20? 30? To the grand scheme of club rugby that's not a
lot. To the Super League teams involved it could mean the
difference between finishing an injury-plagued season or not.
To the further development of the national team, it could
mean the discovery and development of one more guy who could
be great.
And yet the letter
to your right says those few dozen players – who could play
Super League or not (it's their choice) – could ruin
the entire structure.
An open door for a
player between one club and one Super League team should be
allowed. Foreigner restrictions should remain in place.
And if I haven't said
it enough. It's about allowing players to make their own decisions
about where they play.
NOVA president Mike
Murphy says we might consider a consistent nationwide calendar,
with club championships in the fall and a National Super League
in the spring (kind of like what the women have done). It's
an interesting idea full of "yeah buts" but it's
worth considering.
One thing's for sure,
this debate has raised some hackles and stirred some of us,
this writer included, to think. That's good. Let's keep doing
that. |
Letter from Santa Monica RFC
October 12, 2005
Re: Player Eligibility
Dear USA Rugby:
This letter is being sent on behalf
of the Santa Monica Rugby Club, which strongly urges the USA
Rugby Board to not move forward on the proposed plans to alter
Super League and Men’s D-1, 2 and 3 eligibility rules.
It appears to us in Southern California
that the rules are designed to prop up the Super League with
a directly negative impact on club rugby.
Arguments that are being bandied about
regarding player development as the positive effect of the
proposed rules are, to all of us who are supporting, managing
and developing club rugby, much like the emperor’s new clothes:
transparent; that is, support what is supposed to be the best
rugby in the USA with the top club players who do not happen
to be a member of a Super League club by depleting a club’s
top players thereby hindering the clubs in favor of what will
effectively be all-star teams.
The concept of a Super League has value
with respect to developing our national team. In a country
the size of ours, however, twelve (12) or even sixteen (16)
teams cannot represent rugby in the USA.
Rather than attempt to expand the Super
League by adding more teams, (perhaps utilizing a regionalized
organization with teams geographically situated) with the
same goal of a national championship, your goal is to try
and breathe life into a system that needs more than the ability
to take players away from clubs.
Your proposal asks all of the clubs,
not associated with a Super League team, to sacrifice at the
club level for the benefit of the national team. Why should
club rugby show such largess? The answer is simple: we shouldn’t.
Do we want the Eagles to succeed? Absolutely. Can the goals
of a Super League as a vehicle for improving the quality of
play in this country be met outside of the current system?
Again, absolutely. Clearly, the proposed
system would be most damaging in a few parts of the country
where the respective Super League team would have a larger
pool of top D-1 teams from which to secure players; we are
in one of those areas.
Simply stated, the suggested new rules
takes a team that builds to reach the playoffs and then waits
to see which of its top players are
called up to the local Super League team. If this is you goal,
then
state the obvious; namely, if you want
to play for the Eagles, then be on a Super League side. It
appears that your new plan says nothing more and nothing less.
We are fortunate to play in Southern
California. We play in the same league as Belmont and OMBAC,
and in the first half of our season we compete against their
respective super league teams, which, in turn, teach us a
lot about our team. Most importantly, it teaches us that we
can compete, we can succeed and we can do it without shouldering
the obscene cost burdens of being a Super League team.
Please lose your focus on the elitism
of the current Super League program, expand the number of
teams in creating a new Super League, and achieve both a better
pool of talent and, in turn, a better Eagle squad. It is clear
that the current efforts toward a better Eagle squad are not
being met by the Super League program, and destroying club
rugby to the end will achieve nothing, and likely destroy
the foundations of American rugby.
(Editor's note
in the previous paragraph, because it says so much. How can
you have a "better pool of talent" when the current
Super League isn't meeting the needs of creating a better
national team? So you're saying more mediocre players improves
the situation? Secondly, club rugby is not the foundation
of American rugby and never has been. I am not sure there
is one foundation of American rugby, but if there is, historically
and even now, it's college rugby.)
Likewise, if the unlimited foreign-born
player rule for D-1, 2 and 3 is implemented, then all semblance
of developing players gets tossed out, and what becomes of
rugby in this country? (Editor's
note: correct!) It seems that clubs with
money will be able to recruit foreign born players and buy
their way to championships.
The philosophy surrounding rugby in
this country has always supported the development of home-grown
talent (Editor's note: this is demonstrably
false but nice to hear), and in order to help with
that development, clubs have always been allowed to have a
limited number of foreign non-resident players. (Admittedly,
some of these players have obtained residency and filled the
ranks of the Eagles, but it is a tiny portion of the Eagle
pool over the past thirty (30) years.)
The pending proposal could effectively
relegate American players to less opportunity than has always
existed, and runs the risk of decreasing the growth of the
sport.
It is also clear that USA Rugby can
only have one rationale to allow either of these proposals,
both of which clearly put the cart before the horse. If the
Super League teams can take players from other club teams,
then with an unlimited number of non-resident players, one
might argue that at the club level nobody would be hurt since
a club could use its non-resident players. If that is true,
then how can we really develop talent for the Eagle pool?
(Editor's note: well put.)
We call upon you to reject the new eligibility
rules and go back to the proverbial drawing board to come
up with a system that develops Eagle talent without destroying
the club system.
We have designed proposals for a true
Super League that splits the country into zones, that brings
the top teams in each of three (3) regions totaling twenty-four
(24) clubs into a home and away series, that produces an eight
(8) team final bracket (top two (2) teams in each region and
two (2) wild cards) to play for a national championship. Moreover,
it would be just as easy to make it a thirty-two (32) team
format in four (4) regions. In any event, the endgame should
be to support club rugby, not to make a minor league to feed
a few top clubs.
(Editor's note: We
mention this on the left. It's a horrible idea that takes
a good concept in the Super League, sucks all the fun out
of it, and does nothing to create more challenging rugby for
clubs that wants it.)
Please consider the foregoing before
you move forward on these dangerous proposals which are under
consideration.
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