With rugby sevens making its debut at the Olympics in 2016, it’s understandable that Rugby Canada is throwing its support behind the men’s and women’s sevens teams—particularly since both have a legitimate shot at finishing on the podium in Rio.
Unfortunately, Canadian rugby fans are beginning to get the sense that such support has gone too far, with all the hype around sevens coming at the expense of any enthusiasm for Canada’s national fifteens program.
Indeed, Rugby Canada has been only too happy to soak up the attention of the Canadian Olympic Committee, which has been eager to invest in sevens. Since 2012, Own the Podium—Canada’s national program for funding Olympic athletes—has provided this country’s elite sevens players with the financial resources to hone their craft at the highest level. Naturally, the athletes themselves can hardly be blamed for embracing these benefits.
However, with fifteens supporters feeling left out in the cold, now is a good time to examine some reasons why preferential treatment for sevens could actually benefit all Canadian rugby in the long run.
For starters, sevens is a smooth entry point to the wider world of rugby for fans and athletes alike. Whereas fifteens matches are 80 minutes long and feature complex rules and player positions, sevens is a relatively simple game built on supreme athleticism and short, lively matches. This lends sevens the vibe of a basic “pick up and play” game, meaning it has huge crossover potential. And as of 2016, it will be a sport in which fans and players can set their eyes on Olympic glory.
Feeding such an accessible sport into the Olympic publicity machine also means that rugby will reach a far wider Canadian audience than normal, which is something Rugby Canada desperately needs as it works to advance the cause of what is still a niche sport in North America.
These factors bode well for the possibility of increased sevens participation across the country. This, in turn, would only make it more likely that athletes of all ages may choose to give fifteens a try at some point, even though it can be a trickier game to break into.
Far from being a knock on fifteens, however, this actually underscores another upside of Rugby Canada’s current inclination towards sevens. In both the men’s and women’s programs, Canada is hugely dependent on a specific group of players who transition between both sevens and fifteens. This means that when fans hopefully take a shine to the abbreviated game in 2016, they will have more opportunities in the future to recognize a favourite player, whether it be in sevens or fifteens.
Of course, there are downsides to consider.
Player fatigue is the most obvious problem, with core players absorbing an awful lot of physical punishment-not to mention travel miles-because of Rugby Canada’s need to have them participate in both sevens and fifteens.
Further to this, Canada’s struggle to identify or develop the type of athletes who could thrive as world-class front row forwards is ongoing, and an overemphasis on sevens has been blamed for worsening the problem. While the sevens program acts as a conveyor belt of skilled backs, the nature of the game obviously precludes it from developing forwards. Indeed, when analyzing the well-documented struggles of the senior men’s fifteens team in 2014 many observers pointed to a lack of front-row depth. Such concerns are only highlighted by the somewhat contrived decision of the fifteens coaching staff in 2013 to move Aaron Carpenter—a natural back row forward—to hooker, based largely on the lack of other viable options.
To be fair, Carpenter has done an admirable job, and forward issues remain primarily the domain of the men’s team; Canada’s women’s fifteens team galloped all the way to the final of the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup, with their forwards and scrum doing a fair amount of bullying along the way. Still, it is logical to wonder if the women’s forward pack will eventually fall prey to the same systemic neglect which stands accused of undermining the men.
Regardless, the genie is out of the bottle. Sevens is only gaining in popularity, not just in Canada but around the world. As such, Vancouver’s current push to host a Sevens World Series tour stop is welcome, but not wholly surprising. While this may rankle fifteens supporters—who already tolerate a meager six test schedule most years—there is, once again, a potential benefit from the bond between Canadian sevens and fifteens. In this case, a turf makeover at BC Place could benefit both programs. This potential field renovation—a requirement for meeting World Rugby pitch standards—not only represents the final hurdle in the Vancouver sevens bid, but would also theoretically allow Rugby Canada to follow the lead of USA Rugby by hosting New Zealand’s All Blacks.
Of course, there would be considerable sticker shock in the bidding fees for such an event. But the notion of hosting the team which is rugby’s most powerful brand—in a stadium of nearly 60,000 Canadian fans—is the kind of big thinking needed if Canadian rugby is ever to move beyond the stage of simply treading water.
For better or worse, sevens and fifteens are inseparably linked in the Canadian rugby community. By so fully putting their weight behind sevens, Rugby Canada is, in fact, helping to grow both games, frustrating though this may be for those whose first love is fifteens. Ultimately, it’s imperative that the two codes be allowed to feed off each other’s successes, especially in a modern world so jam-packed with sports competing for eyeballs and participants.
As long as fans of Canadian fifteens have patience and continue to make their voices heard, the future of rugby in Canada should be bright. And when this future is realized, no one will remember that it was sevens which led the charge.
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