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Columns | 12.26.11
What it’s like to go to a rugby game. Going to a rugby game in 1997 was
classically amateur. Almost every venue was a field or park somewhere.
Posts were trucked in on the day, and fields lined hastily. Being a fan on
the sidelines meant standing in mud or dust, and it means trying to look
over or (in my case) through and around bigger guys crowing the sideline... Read More
Columns | 12.26.11
What it’s like to go to a rugby game. Going to a rugby game in 1997 was
classically amateur. Almost every venue was a field or park somewhere.
Posts were trucked in on the day, and fields lined hastily. Being a fan on
the sidelines meant standing in mud or dust, and it means trying to look
over or (in my case) through and around bigger guys crowing the sideline... Read More
Columns | 12.24.11
Details on the reasons for Cal withdrawing from D1A (the College Premier
Division) will become clear as time goes on; for many the decision is the
culmination of a series of disillusionments with the commercial model of
the competition.
Oddly,
Cal Head Coach Jack Clark has never publicly complained about the fact that
the league was supposed to generate sponsorship income but... Read More
Columns | 12.24.11
Details on the reasons for Cal withdrawing from D1A (the College Premier
Division) will become clear as time goes on; for many the decision is the
culmination of a series of disillusionments with the commercial model of
the competition.
Oddly,
Cal Head Coach Jack Clark has never publicly complained about the fact that
the league was supposed to generate sponsorship income but... Read More
Columns | 12.14.11
Sendoff
The perfect send-off would have been a World Cup Final and a
victory over Australia this past weekend. It didn’t happen that
way, but it was nice to see Shane Williams, surely one of the great
short rugby players of all time, get a try as he bowed out of
international rugby.
Nice moments... Read More
Columns | 12.12.11
There
is plenty to be happy about following the announcement that Salesi Sika
will be the Head Coach of the Utah Warriors this coming season.
Sika is a smart guy with a long professional rugby career behind him. When
he retired from rugby, I asked him about coaching, and he said he was
certainly interested, but needed to settle back at home first. I am pleased
to see that didn’t... Read More
Columns | 12.10.11
The
USA comes out of the first three tournaments in the Sevens World Series in
11th place. They are in 11th, and not
12th, perhaps in part because Canada doesn’t get to participate
in all the events. Canada missed the opener in Australia, and since then
have matched the USA with 12 points.
Just a few points ahead of the Eagles are Argentina, and Scotland.
During their first... Read More
Columns | 12.04.11
The USA 7s team has a bit of a beef with the refereeing in their past few
tournaments.
Stung by a 9-0 penalty count in the second half, the Eagles found
themselves getting a lecture from referee Rasta Rasivhenge on binding in
the scrum – Rasivhenge did this in between the “crouch” and “touch”
commands.
But the most frustrating series of problems dates back to the Pan-Am... Read More
Columns | 11.30.11
You don’t need me to tell you that professionalizing the USA Olympic Rugby
programs will be big; it’s patently obvious it’s going to be big.
How big?
Eagle Eye is a regular opinion column on USA National Team issues by
RUGBYMag.com Editor-in-Chief Alex Goff. The Eagle Eye column first
appeared in another form in 1998.
Well look at it... Read More
Columns | 11.28.11
There was a great “wait, wait, back up!” moments during the taping of the
RuggaMatrix America, when USA Rugby CEO Nigel Melville floated the
idea of someone in the USA buying London Wasps – the Aviva
Premiership club currently up for sale.
Now,
the idea in and of itself is intriguing. How better to get more Americans
in pro rugby than to buy your own professional rugby team... Read More