USA Rugby To Professionalize Sevens?
American Rugby News has some very interesting breaking news. Apparently, according to USA Rugby CEO Nigel Melville, the governing body may be looking into the possibility of offering professional contracts to select USA Eagles who play on the IRB Sevens World Series circuit.
Contracts would be offered to those who do not currently play professionally overseas. These contracts would run over a period of 36 weeks per season and would offer the athletes not only a wage, but medical costs would also be covered. It also sounds like housing would be provided as the players would train on a daily basis.
I like this idea to be honest. In the past, the majority of our Sevens players were forced to either quit or take time away from their full time jobs in order to travel with the Eagles. Also since these some of these players did not play professionally overseas, training time was limited. Kenya professionalized their Sevens program last year and has already worked wonders as that nation continues to improve on the circuit.
So you take “core” sevens players & pay them, add in professional players from overseas and you have the making of something special. Plus some of the Sevens players under contract will cross over and play 15′s for the USA Eagles, which would be nice since they are earning a wage, much like our current overseas professionals (Todd Clever, Mike McDonald, Takudzwa Ngwenya, Paul Emerick and Chris Wyles to name a few). This could mean the majority of our Eagles 15′s side would be in pretty decent shape coming into camp since everyone is training or playing on a daily basis.
Hopefully this can all be worked out. It would not only help make our 7′s side more competitive internationally, but I believe it would have a very positive impact on our 15′s ahead of the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
South Africa, Kenya and others have proved that professionalising their 7s teams dose work and has yielded a decent return for both teams. However it seems most International 7s teams are cottoning on to this and becoming professional, surly this will put everyone back on a level playing field, therefore any teams who wants competitive advantage will need to look closer at the development of their squads rather then just offering pro contracts and hoping the rest does itself.
You are spot on Barney. We (South Africa) have started a business model in 2007 which are now being copied and implemented by most teams on the Circuit. I like your lingo of competitive advantage, what we often call, our point of difference. If everyone is doing the same thing, everyone will be looking the same and your team will fail to stand out. Like they say in business, if you can’t stand out in a busy market place, your business is a failure. Success lies much deeper than just implementing systems and structures. By merely copying others you fail to innovate. Success always leave clues, take them on board, but the challenge is to find your own point of difference. Paul Treu (Coach – SA)
Cheers Paul, I often find myself drawing parallels between sport and business. Running a sports team with business type strategies clearly works as your 7s team has shown this season. Should I assume given the overall success of SA rugby and Cricket that similar strategies are being implemented across SA sporting spectrum?
As you correctly said innovation is a key to success, if you don’t mind me asking what will be the next major innovation in Sevens? I mean this from both a playing and a business stand point. I understand if the playing innovations are something you are keeping to yourself!!