In to the O2 Arena the crowds came, more than willing to escape a chilly late October evening for the promise of potential – a new format of rugby was to be introduced, one that certain corners of the rugby world had pronounced as the future of the game.
This is a game played five against five, on a half-pitch, a portable game played without lineouts or traditional scrums. The ball is not allowed to be kicked more than ten metres in the air; penalties kicked in to touch cause a change of possession. It is rugby, just about, but certainly not as you know it. This is Rugby X.
It is the brainchild of Ben Ryan, Olympic gold medal winning coach of the Fiji Sevens team, and one of the pre-eminent thinkers in the game.
He envisages the format in the future as a tool for social change in rugby, a format to access new areas.
“We are losing players,” Ryan, the event’s technical director, said of rugby as a whole. “We want to expand that top table and we also want more participation.
“It is only a good thing if we have a really simple tool to get people to come and watch, and enjoy the game and maybe go and watch sevens or fifteens. And then for the entry, developmental level, to have a contact version of the sport in Rugby X that is very simple, that requires the least amount of technical knowledge of any format – you can play it anywhere!
“The Caribbean have already contacted us and talked about running this because of the lack of pitches, as an entry level to propel them into the sevens game. The prison service we have talked with, local councils have talked to us, some of the youth games. There is a lot of interest.”
It is a smart, and necessary, idea, but you couldn’t help but feel those words rung slightly hollow as Ryan talked deep in the bowels of the O2. There was a strange disconnect between his outline for what Rugby X can be, and what the crowd were provided with at the event.
With the tagline “it’s rugby, accelerated”, it was always going to be fast. But what could not quite be prepared for was the fire, fury and the frenzy, rugby accelerated to the point where some clinging on for dear life. The games came close together, the tries often, and the rule changes made the action hard to follow at times for a crowd who had perhaps not quite briefed themselves on how it all works.
The unfamiliarity of the format was perhaps best underlined by England’s lack of celebration at the conclusion of the women’s final, decided by a one-on-one series of tie-breakers at the end of a drawn game – the players did not realise they had won by scoring a third consecutive point in attack, and were preparing another defender. It seemed the players weren’t quite fully up to speed on the format, either.
You’d be forgiven for feeling a little lost in what was an incredibly artificial atmosphere. There was a coordinated, relentless attack on your senses from the word go: flashing lights and flamethrowers to gee things up; up-tempo pop music blasted at every conceivable opportunity; on-pitch “entertainment” from a man in a bedazzled jacket to make even an inebriated aunt at a wedding cringe.
It didn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that, in actuality, the rugby held people’s attention. A little bit of time to reflect and catch your breath between games without music blaring or lights flashing wouldn’t have gone amiss. A half-time is something to consider, too, if only to add a degree of structure and break things up a touch.
The timing was odd, too. Rugby X found itself plonked in the middle of Rugby World Cup Final week, ostensibly to piggy-back off of the tournament’s popularity, but existing more as a weird aside to events in Japan. Will anyone actually remember Rugby X after this weekend?
Organisers may point to the matinee session (which was healthily attended, though not close to full) as a real sign of potential growth – a good portion of this early crowd were children, enjoying some half-term entertainment.
And while some oohed and aahed at the more audacious offloads that a fine set of players produced during the afternoon, the loudest the children ever got was to count down to zero at the end of each game. That seems precisely the sort of engagement such an event is trying to avoid. Figures of 92 or 93 per cent capacity were touted ahead of the later session, but there were more swathes than smatterings of empty seats throughout the evening.
Particularly in the early games, before teams had fully sussed how to defend in the new format, it seemed tries were able to be scored rather simply; a wide pass, one tackle half-slipped through, one well-timed offload. While there is a certain pleasure in a basketball-style end-to-end thriller, it is not demanding to want more meat on the bone, more substance to complement the style. The better games of the night were those that were slightly more messy and inaccurate, those where defences found a degree of parity, and teams truly had to work for their tries. The women’s games stood out in this manner – the physical capabilities of the players seemed closer, and the games were better for it. The England-USA final was an outstanding contest.
So that was Rugby X, which is, for now at least, more spectacle than sport. It is exactly the sort of harmless fun that pervades sport, which is fine, but should we not yearn for more? If Ryan and like-minded people truly believe this can fundamentally change rugby, this was not, perhaps, the event to convince the naysayers.
The future of the format seems relatively easy to forecast. Ryan is really driving this as rugby for the community, for those who do not regularly get the opportunity to play the game, and in that sense it has real potential. The prison service links are incredibly intriguing, and the idea of introducing it to schools who do not provide rugby as part of their sporting curriculum something that has been required for a long while. Rugby has consistently failed to access such populations and it remains a game predominantly played by the elite. It would be a better sport if that was not true.
The event? That’s harder to say. It is a crowd-pleaser, no doubt, but relatively expensive, and plagued with the familiar problems such events have – overpriced food and drinks, queueing, etc. But there are also real problems with the lack of attachment the crowd seemed to feel to the teams. How do you expect to keep the crowds coming back if they feel no connection to the players? Is it simply an event at which kids can while away the half-term hours, and the after-work city folk can engage in cathartic drunken reverie, or is it something more?
USA Men’s Head Coach Mike Friday compared it to Masters Football, the relatively short-lived indoor footballing venture that saw ex-players trundle around uncomfortably at increasingly sparse arenas. Hardly lavish praise, but perhaps that is what Rugby X the event will ultimately become, a novelty sideshow with faces old rather than faces new to add a degree of familiarity, to grab the casual fan. I suspect a celebrity game may be floated (engagement for such events are generally quite good) to try and access a different sort of fan. Greg O’Shea of Ireland, who I understand won a programme called Love Island, was the most popular and widely-recognised player on show, which is perhaps indicative of what the event truly was.
And that’s a real shame, for there were some magnificent players on show, outstanding athletes who seemed, unfortunately, secondary to the pomp and circumstance. As one remarked to me afterwards, it was “an experience”.
But the future of rugby? I have my doubts.
