China gets US$100 million 4 Rugby

[rowan]

Interesting analysis on the state of Chinese rugby:

“The main thing which is actually holding back Chinese rugby is the lack of facilities, lack of grass pitches, lack of trained coaches and lack of understanding of rugby. Can they develop a team in the next 10 years? Unlikely. Will they try? Yeah, they’ll chuck huge amounts of money at it. Will they win a medal or even come close winning a medal in the Olympics? The ladies team, perhaps. But the men’s team, no. They don’t do team sports basically, so they won’t be able to in the next 10 years at least. Maybe the next 20 years. Times are changing and the Chinese have already shown how fast they can develop in other aspects of life.”

http://the1014.com/rugby-in-china-easte ... alse-dawn/

[Stones of granite]

Interesting analysis on the state of Chinese rugby:

“The main thing which is actually holding back Chinese rugby is the lack of facilities, lack of grass pitches, lack of trained coaches and lack of understanding of rugby. Can they develop a team in the next 10 years? Unlikely. Will they try? Yeah, they’ll chuck huge amounts of money at it. Will they win a medal or even come close winning a medal in the Olympics? The ladies team, perhaps. But the men’s team, no. They don’t do team sports basically, so they won’t be able to in the next 10 years at least. Maybe the next 20 years. Times are changing and the Chinese have already shown how fast they can develop in other aspects of life.”

http://the1014.com/rugby-in-china-easte ... alse-dawn/

Bizarre thing to say. Are basketball and football not considered "team sports", then?

[rowan]

Did seem a bit odd. People still have a tendency to speak of China as if it were some alien planet with intrinsic psychological barriers to the rest of the human species destined to set it apart for all of eternity. I lived and worked there briefly about 14 years ago and seem to recall there was plenty of domestic football on the telly -. . . .

[Mellsblue]

The point should really be that they excel in sports with as few moving parts and external elements as possible, ie sports in which rote learning and endless hours of practise are the key. Team sports, and all the unknowables that come with them, need more than just a punishing training regime.

[rowan]

No, that's just the standard Western stereotype imposed by the media and entertainment industries. It's like saying the Japanese are only interested in watching Sumo, the Turks oil wrestling and the Spanish bullfighting. Football, basketball and volleyball are all popular team-sports in Japan nowadays, as are ping pong and tennis which includes pairs. The biggest problem rugby faces in metropolitan China would be non-availability of adequate facilities.

[Stones of granite]

No, that's just the standard Western stereotype imposed by the media and entertainment industries. It's like saying the Japanese are only interested in watching Sumo, the Turks oil wrestling and the Spanish bullfighting. Football, basketball and volleyball are all popular team-sports in Japan nowadays, as are ping pong and tennis which includes pairs. The biggest problem rugby faces in metropolitan China would be non-availability of adequate facilities.

To be fair, that's not what he said. What he said was that China excels in the type of sports he describes, he said nothing about popular interest. If you look at the result of international competitions, he has a good point, and it is perhaps one that is referred to as "not doing team sports" in that article - albeit clumsily put.
On reflection, probably what was meant in the article is that it is difficult shaking out funding from the Chinese authorities which don't fit the profile of sports in which they can excel, bringing us back to Mellsblue's point. Indeed, China are not the only country to do this. We have a very similar issue in the UK where, for example, funding for Winter Olympic sports is to a large extent targeted towards sports that rely on technology, simple skills and minimal external variables such as Skeleton etc.

[rowan]

I understood the comment, thanks. My response remains the same. I was born in Hong Kong, btw, have Chinese family and actually lived and worked in Shanghai for a time some years ago. That's why I'm not particularly fond of these kind of stereotypes. China is a nation of 1.3 billion people, and very diverse cultures, characters, ideologies and behavioral traits. To suggest they uniformly excel at this or that is complete hogwash. They adapt to change and move with the times, just like everyone else.

[rowan]

I guess it makes sense for China to put the emphasis on women's 7s for the time being, as this offers the best chance of success in the relatively short term. It's also got to be good for the game of rugby itself, as any success at all will help raise the sport's profile in the world's most populous nation. So perhaps this is the approach international rugby should be taking in the modern area; rather than focus primarily on the conventional men's game, alternatives could be given greater emphasis in accordance with a nation's apparent strengths and weaknesses. I have suggest before that 7s seems ideally suited to the Caribbean Islands, for example. If they could get a major international tournament up and running in Cuba, perhaps, that would really be something! Similarly, Sri Lanka has just recently announced that it's men's XV had been withdrawn from a regional competition as the emphasis was currently on 7s, in which they had more chance of success. Women's rugby seems to be almost non-existent in Africa, at least at international level, but again 7s might offer the best platform due to its simplicity and far lower financial requirements, as well the natural athleticism of African people.

Coach Chad Shepherd was beaming from ear to ear after China won the World Rugby Women's Sevens Series qualifier in Hong Kong on Friday and it was easy to see why, given that after just two months in the role he had helped China secure six wins from six to claim the coveted core team place on the series next season.

China improved as the tournament went on, scoring 24 tries and conceding just eight, with a knock-out run any team would be proud of, including scoring four tries against a Belgium side that had conceded just one on day one in the semi-finals.

In the final, thanks to a hat-trick from Chen Keyi, victory never looked in doubt for Shepherd’s side as they ran out 31-14 victors over South Africa to earn a return to the series for the first time since 2014-15.

“It is pretty surreal, but a lot of the hard work was already done, this was just adding the icing on the cake really,” Shepherd, the former Germany sevens coach who lost in the men’s qualifier final last year in Hong Kong, told Asia Rugby.

“I am just really proud. We only had nine players left for the last two games, three were ruled out with injuries so they showed a massive amount of heart. The work ethic and determination really showed through, and that was pleasing more than anything.”

https://www.worldrugby.org/womens-seven ... ews/325805

[rowan]

30 MILLION FANS !! Now we just need to work on the other 1.27 billion . . .

China is among the world’s top countries when it comes to the popularity of rugby union with a fanbase of around 30 million, World Rugby said – and that figure could explode if the women’s sevens team win a medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Brett Gosper, CEO of the global governing body, said China and the United States lead the way in terms of rugby fanbase, both with 30 million people either interested or very interested in the game. There is also a strong following in India and Japan.

“It’s interesting to know that the largest number of fans in any single market is actually China, with 30 million rugby fans that we consider interested and very interested in rugby,” said Gosper during the Hong Kong Sevens week. “There are 30 million in the USA, 25 million in India and 15 million in Japan.

https://rugbyredefined.com/wp/china/201 ... ugby-fans/

[rowan]

China springs into action this week, coming in as a replacement for Laos. Should be interesting. They seem to have been out of circulation for a while.

[rowan]

Jakarta (AFP) - Plans for China to get its first professional rugby competition as part of an ambitious $100 million investment have stalled, Alisports said Sunday.

The bold proposals for rugby, currently a low-profile sport in China, were announced nearly two years ago by Alisports -- the sports arm of e-commerce giant Alibaba -- and World Rugby.

They included professional men's and women's 15-a-side leagues as well as a national sevens programme, with the money to be spent over a period of 10 years, the two sides said in October 2016.

But Alisports CEO and founder Zhang Dazhong played down expectations in an interview with AFP Sunday, saying it was "too early" to talk about such high levels of investment in the professional game.

"There isn't much progress on that right now," Zhang said.

"First we want to cultivate the popularity of rugby in China so we will start with that first, and then once we've started then we will think about the goals, like this $100m promise.

"We will start with campus rugby first... We will not be involved with any club, federations or national level regarding the sport."

Rugby is striving to make inroads into Asia, with high hopes for next year's Rugby World Cup in Japan which will be the first held in the continent.

The inclusion of rugby sevens in the Olympics and Asian Games has boosted its profile.

Participation in Asia almost doubled between 2009 and 2017 to more than 500,000 players, according to the sport's governing body.

But fewer than 80,000 Chinese play the sport and it is far less popular among spectators than football or basketball. Its Chinese name translates literally as "English-style olive ball".