The Impending Rise of Chinese Rugby

[Burgs]

Came across this on the Guinness World Records site.
I belive that Israel has also made it the main sport of their military as well.
With the current preocupation by the Chinese to not just be a huge country and population, but to also be seen to be "great" on the world stage, I will be suprised if there is not a rapid ride up the IRB ladder from 39th in a couple of years time.
Currently China give their senior male player figure at 2600, even if 0.1% play on they will have almost doubled their numbers to put them in front of the likes of Tonga.
It would be safe to assume that the Chinese Government and Military will "encourage" a far greater percentage than that to play on for the pride of their country.

Rugby is now the official sport of the Chinese Army. The Chinese asked the New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) to help them establish the sport by providing rugby coaches to travel to China to teach the soldiers - all 2.5 million of them! When NZRFU officials asked how many coaches were needed, the answer was 10,000 - which is many more coaches than New Zealand has!

[Flat-top]

Can't imagine they will have much threat at the line out though would you?

[Darren]

[Burgs]

You had a look at their basketball team lately FT??? No shortage of big bastards there!!!
Don't worry mate, out of the 2.5 million soldiers in their Army I reckon they'll find a fair few 6'8" + players.
The incentive will be there to be a great player too, 'cause it may mean not getting shot in the frontline!

[Sagerian]

The red dragon awakens.....

[felixnelson]

i dunno china always says they want to be world champion at everything.... a few years back they said they wanted to be a test-status cricket nation by 2025....cant see that happening

[Happy]

exactly - they think they can buy success

[Burgs]

I dunno, I personally think they might have a real crack at this compared with other sports.
Lets not forget, that is 2,500,000 players who are all military (savage buggers historically too), in peak fitness and looking for a way to not get shot, that is some decent motivation to make the National XV!!!
By contrast Australia has 29,100 Senior Male Players and England 147,944 (IRB figures) to draw from and that includes all your Senior not just Pro's and top Amateurs.
They are currently IRB 49th, with an injection of 2.5m players I doubt they will remain in that zone for too much longer?
Bizarrely Hong Kong is actually 28th with half the players than China. That would be like Tasmania being above Australia or Scotland being above New Zealand.....

[Happy]

yeah that is true Burgs, I mean more from a cultural thing though, Rugby in China isn't something that has a hundred odd years ingrained in their national sports ... I seriously don't think they will climb to a level of the expectation they might have, buying in coaches etc

[Flat-top]

Burgs I agree that those figures you quote are probably close to the total pool of players but to be fair you need to look at the total number of professionals each nation has when you are looking at how well they may or may not do at international level.

England I understand has 400 professionals (there are only 12 Professional teams) but if I recall correctly only 150 are eligible to play for England (due to their crap decisions to allow foreign nationals the opportunity to incerase their pension fund and take the place of English nationals).

It doesn't really help having 147k people playing the sport if the infrastructure isn't in place to nurture potential talent and further when the cream of those numbers then don't even qualify as English it matters less still. How many of those 147k do you think for instance are Irish, Scots, Welsh, some other European nationality or even Aussie that just happen to live in England, a significant proportion I would think considering the closeness of european countries, this isn't the case for the SH countries whose players probably all qualify for the country they live in.

I know this isn't the case you started making for the Chinese, clearly they are all Chinese (!) but just having a huge pool to choose from does not make them sucessful, otherwise the USA and Russia would have experienced more success.

[Burgs]

Yep, fair call F-T however where the Chinese differ from the US (Russia is different as it doesn't have playing numbers either, 2700 Senior Male Players) is that as it is driven in the military framework they will be trained as professionals and results will be expected.
And as above, if only 0.5% are good enough they will have the same elite player base as Tonga etc.
That said, I think the US may be only a decade away from being regular top ten challangers as well, they are finally getting it together for the code there with a Pro comp and a huge schools development program being implimented.

[Rodent]

Burgs the issue there is that most of the atheletes that would be perfect for Rugby play American Football... Or basketball.
I used to live with some american guys and we always joked that we should get all the ex-college football players who never made it to the NFL to come down to Australia and play rugby. They have the potential athletes to do it, but rugby is never going to be the first choice for these guys so you end up with very few players who have grown up with the game. But if they are getting their act together over there and targeting the right types then the US will be a force to be reckoned with in a fairly short space of time.

[Pumbaa]

if the chinese put there female swim team in they will have a decent forward pack to lol

[Burgs]

If you read it on TWF this is the thread I think you meant James?

[travelling_gerry]

I think the Chinese women won the plate(?) final in Dubai