3 March: USA v Uruguay ARC

[Thomas Profile]

I just feel this traveling across one end of the USA to the other is not conducive to overall USA Rugby strategy it somehow looks that it's misfiring. You need a permanent base be it Colorado, Texas or Illinois. Having Tests in different cities doesn't seem to help when sports still needs to bed-in and build a proper hotbed.

[Coloradoan Profile]

Rugby is down the pecking order in Colorado too. In Denver there's probably a decent argument that even lacrosse is bigger.

BTW, well done Uruguay.

[TheStroBro Profile]

I just feel this traveling across one end of the USA to the other is not conducive to overall USA Rugby strategy it somehow looks that it's misfiring. You need a permanent base be it Colorado, Texas or Illinois. Having Tests in different cities doesn't seem to help when sports still needs to bed-in and build a proper hotbed.

We do need a strategy where we have four/five home tests per year and three of those cities never change. But no one has thought about that sadly. Regionally, the most tests we've played at home have been in the Bay Area. And then most of those in San Fransisco.

Houston overall has been a good draw. LA can be when you compare all of the numbers, but with no marketing done (Facebook only ad buys) you can see the massive swings which we had last year in the ARC, 6500 for ARG XV at Stubhub vs. 1300 in Fullerton for Chile.

[4N Profile]

Having Tests in different cities doesn't seem to help when sports still needs to bed-in and build a proper hotbed.

Personally I’d choose Salt Lake City.

[TheStroBro Profile]

Having Tests in different cities doesn't seem to help when sports still needs to bed-in and build a proper hotbed.

Personally I’d choose Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City had some of the biggest draws for Rugby Matches ever in the US that aren't a T1 test. I think they had a few of those Championship matches between Cal and BYU at 15k, maybe?

Not sure about that, but people need to be more honest about where the Eagles are as a team. We got carried away after the ARC and the Scotland test last year. The scrum has been a crippling weakness for at least 10 years now but no one wants to take the steps to fix it because it would require a few people admitting fault.

Admittedly I did. We had our best run of form in a very long time. But what it took to beat Scotland was our first choice team at every position, and we didn't have that last night. Says a lot about where our depth is in certain positions. Prop and Lock remain extremely shallow pools. I had to take a step back for a moment this morning and examine where we are. A country of 330MM people, we have less than 60k registered male players from minis to old boys. Can't compete against someone like England that has over 1MM registered males playing senior rugby. Got a long way to go, shows how poor our development system remains. There were things we could have done to recruit top tier athletes back to rugby, we've lost a lot of guys who were HSAAs to NCAA sports that never came back because there wasn't an ability to earn a wage...but moreso because no one kept in touch with them.

We've got a lot of work to do with our development structures.

[Coloradoan Profile]

England does not have 1 million registered males playing senior rugby. That would be insane.

[4N Profile]

Having Tests in different cities doesn't seem to help when sports still needs to bed-in and build a proper hotbed.

Personally I’d choose Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City had some of the biggest draws for Rugby Matches ever in the US that aren't a T1 test. I think they had a few of those Championship matches between Cal and BYU at 15k, maybe?

Yeah the BYU-Utah game got around 12k a few years ago iirc.

[TheStroBro Profile]

England does not have 1 million registered males playing senior rugby. That would be insane.

Just went back and checked...the old IRB website which can be found on the wayback machine has even more funny numbers than WR touts now it seems. Total registered players (M/W) for England is 382k. Which is still 4x our total registered population of 90k.

[Thomas Profile]

I found this link in World Rugby

https://www.world.rugby/development/player-numbers?lang=en

[Armchair Fan Profile]

This is the latest graphic from World Rugby. From 2017 annual report, issued in 2018. But we've long discussed that figures are unreliable:

[Tobar Profile]

If we were to capitalize on Uruguayan population this test would not be in Seattle...no Market research was done, and part of this was also to save costs which I understand. But...tickets for both this and the Canada match are lagging.

There are no Uruguayans in the US so there isn’t a single place that would make sense based off that demographic. The only way it makes sense is if you pick a place like Miami or NYC/NJ that has lots of Latinos who may be interested in watching Uruguay play but that would probably only be interesting to people if they played another Latin team.

[TheStroBro Profile]

Are you drunk?

There are Uruguayns in this country. Houston being one of the largest spots for Uruguayans. New York has a good amount as well.

Places with decent populations of Uruguayans-SF, LA, NYC, HOU, Miami, and Chicago.

[qwerty Profile]

Very few though, and given how rugby isn't exactly the most popular sport in Uruguay, or the US, Uruguayan expats shouldn't be a factor when deciding the venue.

[Salta Profile]

There are barely any uruguayans in Uruguay.

[Tobar Profile]

Are you drunk?

There are Uruguayns in this country. Houston being one of the largest spots for Uruguayans. New York has a good amount as well.

Places with decent populations of Uruguayans-SF, LA, NYC, HOU, Miami, and Chicago.

There are more Uruguayans on the Sabercats roster than the rest of Houston. There are only around 50,000 in the entire country as of the 2010 census. NYC has the most at a whopping 3000. Houston has 650. Unless you plan on getting every single Uruguayan out to a game (which won’t even fill half a stadium) then there’s no reason to target a location based off demographics.

Meanwhile, take another group like Colombians and there are over 200,000 in NYC alone. In Houston there are 28,000. That’s a group you can plan around and they’re not even in the top 5 of Latin communities here.

[4N Profile]

There were a decent number of Uruguayans at the 2014 qualifying game in Georgia. Over 100 I would say. I sat next to a group. They were pretty lively, especially an older lady who yelled “vamos seleccion” over and over.

[qwerty Profile]

I doubt they were living in Georgia, must have been on a trip or something.

Perhaps they lived in different places in the US and flew for the game.

Remember that not only is our population small, we send way fewer people per capita to the US than other Latin countries.

Also (from the ones that I know) they tend to form relationships with white Americans, so the community doesn't carry through the generations.

[RugbyPUBtbilisi Profile]

Uruguay looks dangerous... Beating US is huge. Congrats to Uruguay.

I think they will give Georgia hell of a fight on RWC.

Nice to see more T2s progressing so fast. Brazil is another example...

[Coloradoan Profile]

I doubt they were living in Georgia, must have been on a trip or something.

Perhaps they lived in different places in the US and flew for the game.

Remember that not only is our population small, we send way fewer people per capita to the US than other Latin countries.

Also (from the ones that I know) they tend to form relationships with white Americans, so the community doesn't carry through the generations.

They probably traveled from around the US like the Kenyans (and a few other expat groups) do for the USA 7s. I knew a Uruguayan-American girl growing up. Her cousin was actually former Uruguay captain Juan Campomar.

[TheStroBro Profile]

Are you drunk?

There are Uruguayns in this country. Houston being one of the largest spots for Uruguayans. New York has a good amount as well.

Places with decent populations of Uruguayans-SF, LA, NYC, HOU, Miami, and Chicago.

There are more Uruguayans on the Sabercats roster than the rest of Houston. There are only around 50,000 in the entire country as of the 2010 census. NYC has the most at a whopping 3000. Houston has 650. Unless you plan on getting every single Uruguayan out to a game (which won’t even fill half a stadium) then there’s no reason to target a location based off demographics.

Meanwhile, take another group like Colombians and there are over 200,000 in NYC alone. In Houston there are 28,000. That’s a group you can plan around and they’re not even in the top 5 of Latin communities here.

USA South would be a good opponent for Colombia...not the Eagles.

[Tobar Profile]

No one’s suggesting that they would be