Hi. My name is Eric. Welcome to GrowRugby.
I thought I’d make my opening post on this blog of ours a sort of manifesto, a few words that lay out my personal ethos on growing rugby in America, and reason for contributing to this publication.
So, if you’re reading this you probably like rugby. You like playing, coaching, refereeing, administering, or even just supporting. It’s an amazing game that provides young and old the world over experiences and lessons they never dreamt possible… but you already knew this.
You probably also know that rugby in this country has potential, lots of it. True, “rugby is currently ranked somewhere between lawn darts and armed robbery on the popular American activities scale” (to paraphrase an old piece I once read in a New Zealand newspaper), but its growing fast. There are lots of people, events, ideas, underwriters, and initiatives to thank for this growth, and in the coming years, there will be many more.
That’s why I am writing here today. There is so much GOOD going on in the American rugby landscape, by so many people, and their story needs to be told. People from the employees of USA Rugby, USA Sevens, or the IRB… on down to a gym teacher somewhere in a small town who is teaching Rookie Rugby to a group of kids for the first time. Great stuff, all of it.
I think we can all agree that that the end goal is to grow the sport, and bring its virtue and excitement to the American sporting masses.
However, we all have differing opinions on what is the best way to do good for the game. It’s human nature, sure. But considering we all have the same end goal, I feel the American rugby dialogue has turned sour.
For people who invest their time, effort, thought, money, blood, sweat, and tears on rugby in this country, we seem to have reached an “us vs them” stage. I’m right, you’re wrong. Organization A vs Organization B. Investment should be made here, and not there. Team X has this advantage, so it’s not fair to the rest of us. “Big” school vs “little” school…. These arguments get flung around in circles, time and time again. Well, it’s bringin’ me down.
It’s my belief that there is no silver bullet that is the one and only way to grow rugby in this country. I believe that the negative attitude is brought about because sometimes good-meaning people get a narrow world-view, and lose sight of the big picture.
To use a cliché: You gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet. Not every strategy, initiative, tactic or event is going to all of a sudden put rugby on top of the NFL as the sport of choice. However, when we reach that critical mass of good people doing more good things to grow the game with a larger world-view, we’ll really start moving in the right direction. There will be growing pains, and we need to work them out together.
So that’s it really. That’s why we created growrugby.com, and this is what I believe. I love thinking about what rugby could be, and signs of it happening are all over the place. We have to work together, and support ALL the folks making gains, weather you think they are big or small, right or wrong. So that’s what we’ll do, bring you stories from the front lines of American Rugby. Good people, doing good things, for the good of the game.
Let’s work together to get rid of the ego, hubris, jingoism, greed, and shortsightedness that is common in our game, and work together to GrowRugby
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