The nice thing about Cal losing to first Cal Poly and now St. Mary's is whoever wins the national championship can be perceived as legitimate champions.

Cal era over. Step up Life U.

I know the eastern schools hate the travel but I feel like St. Mary's and BYU should be on opposite sides of the bracket.

Down year for Cal, but Life has a long way to go before they catch up with Cal. And until high school rugby in the South catches up with Northern California, it's hard to see that changing much.

I disagree. Life has made huge strides in just these past two seasons with their UG program. I guess if they meet St. Mary's or BYU at some point it will answer some of those questions.

I'd be willing to bet a lot of money on BYU beating Life in a championship game this year should that matchup happen. All for seeing more teams get to the BYU/Cal level though as that can only be good for both college rugby and rugby in general in this country.

Depends where that game is played.

USAR need to make a move on some of these young US eligible players.

In addition to Brache and Mabeta there's also Tommy Seymour, a wing/FB who's had some starts for Glasgow.

http://www.glasgowwarriors.com/articles ... 006670.php

15 Seymour
14 Ngwenya
13 Wyles
12 Brache
11 Paterson
10 Eloff?
9 Petri

... as good a group as we've ever had. No Dirksen required.

So I've now finished my reffing trip to Minnesota so I thought I'd share my thoughts on the rugby on here. Disclaimer: I am well aware that Minnesota is not necessarily an accurate snap shot of the nation and that my experience was limited to two weeks. These are purely my observations.

I reffed 6 "proper" matches - 2x college, 2x Boys HS and 2x Girls HS. I also reffed a lot of "third halves"/tens/sevens after the main event and a couple of training games for the University of Minnesota girls and then the St Paul Pigs who (all thanks to me of course ) went on to win their playoff game that weekend. So I saw quite a wide variety of the rugby on offer. The rugby is generally faster and more physical than it would be at the same level in blighty, the players are all committed to the cause and don't accept losing as easily as English teams often will. Largely the players are hugely pumped up as well.

Tactically a lot of the teams leave a lot to be desired. While there is almost certainly too much kicking in English rugby, there is far too little in America and generally it is of poor quality. Teams seem to instinctively call one play and stick with it regardless of the situation that presents itself. I would put a lot of that down to the fact that most of the players are relatively new to the sport and the influence of American Football, which imo leads to the physical nature of the game too. Skill levels can often be relatively low too.

I wont dwell on facilities because it is pretty self evident that English clubs are going to have better facilities and the clubs in the US do the best they can with the resources available.

There seems to be greater respect for the officials in the US than at home which did surprise me. Being called "The sir" rather than "sir" bugged me though!

The teams are far more social in America. After every game there were at least some people singing rugby songs and the opposition would hang around for a few beers. Heck Duluth booked themselves into hotel rooms and partied all night after my final game! After both college games I was invited to stay for the evening which I did and I thoroughly enjoyed my experience of American College parties!

I am struggling to place the teams at an equivalent level in England. Edina HS went on tour to England and seemed to have done pretty well which didn't surprise me but the colleges I would put around the Level 8 mark. The result would all depend on whether the English club was up for the physical confrontation.

Finally, it is hugely admirable what you guys manage to achieve with the hand you are dealt. Numbers seem to be booming and standards improving which is great to see. The Minnesota Referees Society also have some bloody good refs too. English players whinge and whine an incredible amount and to see the work put in, and the distances travelled, by Americans to play the game makes them seem even more pathetic than I thought they were before my trip.

I can see the sport growing as an amateur participation sport, particularly in the smaller colleges, but struggle to see a professional structure taking shape any time soon.

The Minnesota Referees Society took great care of me and I'll make sure we do the same when one of their refs comes over to Bucks in the autumn.

As a side note I only gave one card (yellow) during the trip and that was to a High School kid for a kick. Turns out we were both born in Watford and his Mum is from Bovingdon, about 4 miles down the road from me! Its a small world.

Plus a back row to rival the Lyle/Hodges days perhaps. Manoa and Clever plus one of Gagiano, Stanfill, Roundy or Barrett for the other spot. Still need a 10, though. Maybe try out Paterson or Brache (if he plays for us) at 10 this summer? Maybe even Wyles? I'm hopeful for Eloff but I certainly don't want to pin all hopes on him.

Croyals,

Thanks for the report. What you described sounds like much of rugby in America. In my first college game, I was told by the coach we weren't allowed to kick and I actually had to do pushups after the game because I did a chip and chase (that led to a try). I think you'll generally find the best rugby played in Northern California and Utah because kids in these places tend to start at a younger age. That means they read the play better and have better instincts. One of the big positives in the last few years has been youth rugby flourishing which will pay big dividends long term IMO.

Without going all Scott Johnson, here's another one to keep an eye on: Rodney Mason, Willie's younger brother. He's a 20 year old playing for the Newcastle Knights' U20 team. No known union back ground, but should he ever take a rugby contract overseas or in Super Rugby, definitely could be one to watch. Has an American-born parent that makes him US-eligible.

I highlighted a few items in there, because I agree with you on a few of these things.

Really glad you enjoyed the trip, let me know if you want to try New England, and I'll get you set up with something.

"The sir" thing annoys the hell out of me. It is very prevalent in the MidWest for some reason, along with talking about someone "Sirring the game". They somehow have confused a term of address with both a noun and a verb!

I'll definitely be looking to come back so thanks for the offer and I will let you know. University will swallow most of my funds so I probably wont be back for a while!

I don't see how "the sir" got into the vocabulary - I've never heard it anywhere else. It bugs a lot of the local refs too.

I've never heard someone say "the sir" in my life. Weird Easterners and Midwesterners.

Yeah, in the Mid-Atlantic I've only heard "sir". Although this past weekend we had a "ma'am" and sometimes guys on our sideline said "sir".

Minnesota's full of Scandinavians so it could be they're just odd.

What the hell is 'the sir'? I have never heard of it too.

Its very odd, used by all sides I reffed and talking to the local refs by everyone in the mid west. Genuinely bugged me, though the fact you don't get people whinging like you would in England about:
1) The fact that I haven't blown for full time with 20 minutes to go
2) The fact that I played advantage so they had to carry on running
3) The weather
4) The opposition are being mean to them
5) They had a half hour drive to the match and need a delayed kick off to cope with the jet lag

Evened it out

I thought first up that the accent was due to proximity to Canada but I now reckon its the Scandanavian influence.

I did manage to avoid referring to them as "Southern Canada" during my entire stay too

Ah yes, the wonderful Minnesota Nice accent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy2HfixB9_8

First thing that came to mind for me too. Great movie.

On another note, watching a lot of the NHL Playoffs on the various NBC networks has forced me to see their repeated ads for the Notre Dame spring game. A game of 7s between Notre Dame and Gentlemen of Aspen is being played at halftime. Is it worth subjecting myself to a Notre Dame spring game to see if they show the rugby?

you can DVR it and fast forward to halftime, although Aspen? really?

The connection is that former 5* recruit and Notre Dame RB James Aldridge plays for Aspen so he was the one who helped facilitate the game being played during the ND spring game. If I wasn't so busy trying to recreate my freshman year of college when I lived in Aspen, I probably would have played for them.

Glad people are finding use of my brackets. Just found this forum after browsing the google analytics for my website. Looks like some good discussion.

Fuck off noob.



Welcome

Welcome. We definitely need more American posters here even though our numbers have grown over the years.

nice...so I can tell there's a player from New York RFC and Raleigh here. I play with NORFC. Anybody got a scouting report on the Chicago Lions?

Cheers, it is just the standard greeting for all new posters. As I said right under it, welcome.

Some new Preliminary Numbers from the IRB on player numbers for USA... No doubt including that 400K school kids who played Rugby for a few hours at a Rugby clinic....

----
number Of Clubs:2588

Registered+Unregistered Players: 457,983

Number of Referees: 215

Pre-teen Male Players: 178819

Pre-teen Female Player: 150267

Teen Male Player: 47323

Teen Female Player: 19594

Senior Male Player: 50211

Senior Female Player: 11769

-----
Total Male Player:276353

Total Female Player: 181630

Just think, if those numbers were accurate those refs would be very busy during season. 457,000 players would equal approx 20,000 teams, and if they all played each weekend there would be 10,000 games-with only 215 refs they would each need to ref about 50 games a weekend.

Get excited! The Greatest Game Of All comes to the USA!!!!

Redsfan,

We have been trying to have a moratorium on league posts in this thread because, quite frankly, none of us really care about league.

Haha. Good point. Although it does show that even the IRB thinks 1.1 million is incredibly out of whack and they're probably inflating that to get the 457k number.

Redsfan, you're breaking Rule #2.



F*ck off n00b is the standard forum greeting, don't take it personally. Welcome, just don't get into any sh*tfights involving the Haka, the Irish, and the Welsh and you'll be fine here.

I don't know of anyone here that plays in the Midwest. We also have a guy from the Renegades down in your relative neck of the woods and a couple Californians.

True, although usually high school games are mid-week with college and club on the weekends and you can have refs doing multiple games in the same day. Plus for stuff like Play Rugby USA, I'd assume the refs aren't registered. I mean if we are talking 15-a-side rugby union, then obviously that number is wrong but if you include other stuff which they clearly are I think it's realistic.

Sherman named HC of the AAs, Huckaby forwards coach, Phil Eloff backs coach.

more on grand prix entertainment rugby.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/grand- ... 2012-04-19

Good article on Eric Fry here: http://www.calbears.com/sports/m-rugby/ ... 12aaa.html



Would be great to see him playing ITM Cup rugby next year. Hope it happens and it would definitely bode well for the Eagles. Like I said before, he has only been playing prop for a couple years so the scrummaging still has time to come around and there is no one better to learn from than Mike Cron.

Someone paid $10 million for a franchise!?

Deserves its own thread since that kind of money will have a global impact on rugby, not necessarily all good either.

I reckon it does. 10 million for a sevens team shows that they are pretty serious. If their salary bill is anything near that, then good-bye any decent backs in XVs.

Yea.. But is that for a 7s TEAM.. Or a 7s EVENT?

Im leaning to it being an EVENT.