This post originally appeared on the Blotch page at the Fort Worth Weekly. To read it on their site : http://www.fwweekly.com/2015/10/13/the-bristol-rugby-club-scrummaging-with-the-big-boys/
What would the Allen Americans of the ECHL do if
the Winter Olympics staged its hockey tournament in Texas in the middle
of the team’s season?
The Americans would have to assess how to sell tickets to their games
while contests in the same sport, played at its top level, occurred
nearby simultaneously. Would the best strategy be to ignore the
Olympics, bash them, or perhaps find a way to take advantage of them?
In the United Kingdom, a number of rugby union teams find themselves
faced with a similar decision. As the Rugby World Cup rages around them,
teams like Bristol Rugby Club must find a way to market their own
products, too.
England’s top rugby union league (not to be confused with the similar
but different sport called “rugby league”) is the Aviva Premiership. It
suspended games until the RWC enters its knockout rounds this week,
kind of like how the NHL and the Dallas Stars don’t play games during
the Olympic hockey tournament. Bristol, alas, finished a point short of
promotion to the first division last season, so they compete in the
second-best league in England, the Greene King IPA Championship. They
play a regular schedule, which has so far included three home games.
I joined 4,560 fans in attending the season’s third game, which came
against Rotherham. The season-low crowd may well have had something to
do with rugby burnout after England’s national team had its RWC title
hopes crushed by Australia the evening before.
Bristol has additional issues brought on by the Rugby World Cup. For
one, the franchise had the team from Georgia (the country, not the state
whose official reptile is the gopher tortoise) training in its city,
potentially drawing rugby attention away from the local side. For
another, Bristol actually loses players to national sides, an obstacle
an ECHL team would be highly unlikely to face. Matthew Morgan got the
call from Wales, Jack Lam and Anthony Perenise played for Samoa, and
Tommaso Benvenuti wore a blue Italy shirt.
First Team Coach Sean Holley doesn’t view their departure as a negative, however.
“We have four players involved and that puts Bristol on the map.
They’ll come back having participated in that environment,” he said.
In addition to the experience the quartet of internationals will
gain, an added benefit will come from the playing time the club’s
younger players will get in their absence.
“That’s only going to hold us in good stead when the internationals
come back,” said flanker Olly Robinson, who scored two tries (similar to
American football’s touchdowns) in the win over Rotherham.
Winning games, certainly, never hurts attendance no matter what else
is going on. Holley may have found another RWC benefit, as well, one
that may have contributed to his squad’s four-game winning streak.
“I’ve been showing examples of good practice (as seen in the RWC) to the players,” he said.
Off the field, Bristol Rugby has chosen to embrace the biggest
international event in its sport and turn interest in it to the club’s
advantage as much as possible.
Program (aka “programme”) articles celebrate Bristol ties to the
tournament. The franchise sponsors watching parties for the RWC games
and encourages fans to stay after home games to watch the end of the
international games as well. Fans can cluster around TVs inside the
stadium, too.
To counter pressure from a nationally prominent competitor, it will
often behoove a local business to emphasize grassroots initiatives. At
halftime of the Rotherham game, participants in that morning’s Ashton
Park schools under-13 rugby tournament paraded around the field.
Bris has a mascot, too, to enhance the game experience of young fans,
many of whom may have no idea the RWC is even going on. National
mascots are never as lovable as local ones like Brizzley Bear.
Bristol’s Ashton Gate stadium is currently in the midst of a
construction phase, with the beginnings of a new west-side stand
starting to take shape behind the teams’ bench areas. More than once, a
kick went into touch (out of bounds in mainstream U.S. sports parlance)
and into the construction site. The Bristol staff member who retrieved
it did not wear a hard hat, but luckily the excavators and haulers sat
idle during the match.
The project may have helped the team avoid suffering from any
sponsors wanting to reserve their rugby money for RWC initiatives.
Bristol Sports, which runs several teams in the area, has clearly worked
hard to persuade construction contractors to get involved as club
sponsors. One could count at least five companies related to the
construction industry with signage in the stadium, and more had program
ads and other presence.
The facility the rugby team shares with soccer’s Bristol FC will
eventually have the capacity to hold some 26,000 fans. Bristol Rugby
hopes to win its league’s playoff this season and ascend to the
Premiership, which will greatly help with filling the new stands and
suites. The team might still have to play games during the 2019 Rugby
World Cup, though, as it will be held in Japan. The next year, that
country will also host an Olympic Games. The Olympics seem unlikely to
come to North Texas any time soon, but if they do, local teams might be
well advised to confer with the folks at Bristol Rugby.
Rush
Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams
and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related
creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson
Creative & Sports.
This post originally appeared on the Blotch page at the Fort Worth Weekly. To read it on their site : http://www.fwweekly.com/2015/09/29/missing-the-rugby-world-cup-its-a-crime/
Note to local miscreants: If you had plans to rob a house, you missed your chance Sunday. You should have been in Ireland.
You had no idea, did you? We can guess you didn’t because most of the
United States likely doesn’t realize the world’s third-largest global
sporting event is going on right now. The Irish know, though. Some
89,267 fans packed London’s Wembley Stadium Sunday, and judging by their
number of green shirts (and wigs, facepaint, and capes), 89,167 of the
assembled throng were Irish. The entire country seemed to have emptied
to come watch its national team, and set an attendance record for a
Rugby World Cup game. And of those Irelanders who didn’t make it across
the Irish Sea to see the match in person, you’d have to figure a
significant portion of them watched the TV3 broadcast in pubs for the duration of the match. So that meant a lot of temporarily vacant housing ripe for burgling.
Of course, even if you’d tuned in to see the match here in the States
and noticed the green sea covering the stadium’s red seats, you
wouldn’t have made it to the Emerald Isle in time to get into much
trouble. But you almost certainly didn’t watch it because it wasn’t one
of the featured matches on official U.S. broadcasters Universal Sports
Network and NBC Sports Network. Those outlets are carrying USA Rugby’s
matches plus a handful of others (including the semis and final). You
would have had to purchase the pay-per-view package with your ill-gotten gains.
FYI, the USA’s chances to advance past pool play don’t look strong at
this point. They’ve lost tough games to Samoa and Scotland (though they
did lead the latter at halftime), and they’ve got match-ups ahead
against Cinderella story Japan and one of the world’s best, South
Africa.
If you do fancy watching upcoming U.S. games at Upper 90 on College
or another rugby-friendly sports bar, you’ll want to come armed with
some knowledge.
Firstly, know that the sport you’ll watch is called “rugby union.”
It’s played with 15 players per side and is distinct from the rugby
league code, which uses 13 men. The two sides split more than a hundred
years ago over professionalism issues. The American football code broke
off from rugby not long after that, fyi. Rule (or law, as they say in
rugby) differences evolved over time. Rugby union, the most popular code
in most of the world, finally went professional in the 1990s.
New Zealand’s team, known as the All Blacks for the uniforms they
wear, is the defending champion and the favorite to win in 2015.
Australia, England, France, Ireland, South Africa, and Wales are also
considered to have decent chances. New Zealand and some of the Pacific
Island teams perform Haka rituals before the game. These are based on native dances and are an important part of rugby tradition.
I won’t try to explain all the laws (rules) here, but just remember
you can’t pass the ball backwards and you can tackle really hard as long
as you come in low and wrap up your opponent. To score a try (similar
to a football touchdown), you have to cross the tryline (aka goal line)
and touch the ball to the ground.
World Rugby (formerly known as the International Rugby Board), the
sport’s global governing body, suggests that the Rugby World Cup ranks
behind only the Olympics and soccer’s FIFA World Cup in worldwide
impact. Teams representing six continents participate, with Canada,
Argentina, and Uruguay joining the USA from the western hemisphere.
England hosts the quadrennial event this year, with Wales also
staging eight games (Japan gets it in 2019). Whether you’re into rugby
or not, the whole spectacle of a huge sporting event feels cool to a
sports fan. The RWC’s presence shows up throughout London. Notices
remind you to factor in possible gameday delays when taking the train,
advertising signs pass along official sponsor messages (and the
occasional ambush ad), and people wearing rugby shirts from many
countries wander the streets.
The game I attended (together with the whole of Ireland) came at
Wembley Stadium. The facility serves as England’s national association
football (soccer) stadium, but it has also have played host to a pair of
RWC matches. Even though the crowd had only pockets of yellow-clad
Romanian supporters, the game presentation stayed studiously down the
middle, as it must during a neutral-site event. The P.A. announcer’s
energy level when announcing lineups and tries for both sides would have
felt at home at a Mavs game. They play both national anthems before the
match and have a large video board for replays.
Late in the game, a wave (or Mexican wave, as the English
call it) broke out. It started poorly, with different decks going in
different directions, but eventually straightened itself out.
A packed pregame fanfest offered a chance for attendees to
mingle, drink Heineken (RWC official beer), try a few rugby-related
games, and watch USA v Scotland on a big screen. At one point, one of
the event’s on-screen messages directed Dermot Kelly, Michael Collins,
and Padraig Pearse to the lost-and-found. It was either a prank, a joke,
or a tradition and I never quite figured out which – the men mentioned
are an actor and two Irish revolutionaries from the days when they
fought the English presence on their home island. While we’re on the
subject of revolutions, here’s another good reason for the American one.
On a whim, we tried the nachos in the fanzone. Thank goodness for
independence – you do not want the English controlling your
nacho-making. Trust me.
Once the game began, a strong Irish team coming off a win in the RBS 6
Nations tournament (an annual meeting of the national rugby teams of
England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Wales) crushed the
Romanians. The Irish team now sits at the top of Pool D.
Criminals, take note, Ireland plays again on Saturday against Italy.
If you’re taking a crowbar or wire cutters with you on the plane, be
sure to put them in your checked luggage. For the rest of you, there’s a
huge sporting event going on, to which you may want to pay attention.
You might really enjoy the spectacle and the competition, even if you’ve
planned nothing more nefarious than collapsing a scrum.
Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts
for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns
and related creative projects for sports entities through his company,
Rush Olson Creative & Sports.
RushOlson.com
Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports
Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports
