Thu, Aug 08, 2019 page16

• Try, try and try again: Rugby is still struggling to take a foothold in China

  • AFP, CHONGQING, China
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  Children run around a small indoor pitch in southwest China, laughing, zigzagging between cones and tossing around a rugby ball — then one child tears up when another fails to pass to him.

  “Pass it on, get up and stop crying,” coach Zhang Shuangyi said, with a dose of tough love from the sidelines at the Simba Rugby Youth Club in Chongqing.

  Rugby is going through growing pains in China, where the sport known as “olive ball” remains mysterious to many and attempts to spread its popularity are stuttering.

  

  A girl takes part in a training session at a youth rugby club in Chongqing, China, on March 23.

  Photo: AFP

  While Japan is getting ready to host the Rugby World Cup from Sept. 20, the game is struggling for a foothold in China.

  The national men’s team are ranked 80th out of 105 national sides, and were nowhere near qualifying for the first World Cup to be held in Asia.

  Even a US$100 million offer from Alisports, an offshoot of Alibaba, to create professional men’s and women’s leagues failed to produce results. The plan was later shelved.

  “Unlike soccer and basketball, rugby isn’t very popular in China. Mostly, people think it’s a rough sport,” Zhang said.

  World Rugby cites research claiming that the sport has 30 million fans in China, which it says is the world’s biggest fan base alongside the US.

  Neither are exactly hotspots of the game, and in China, much of the activity centers on the dozens of amateur teams scattered among the country’s mega-cities.

  “The good thing about rugby is that there’s a sort of magic to it that sucks you in, but it’s not just the sport, it’s also the camaraderie,” said Simba cofounder Xia Jialiang, a former national team player.

  “This sort of magic with rugby is something that we hope to share with everyone,” he said.

  Simba was founded by members of an amateur team that had set up a gym in 2009 to help fund the squad’s travels.

  Eventually renaming themselves the Chongqing Rangers, the players, many of whom discovered rugby at university, then started an academy for older teens.

  Now, youngsters aged three to 18 learn the art of passing, scrums, mauls and drop-kicks three times a week, as well as soft skills like communication and teamwork.

  “Many kids these days are only children who don’t communicate much with others ... which leads to them being more selfish,” Zhang said, referencing China’s abandonned one-child policy.

  “But here, we emphasize teamwork and encourage the children to share. Many of them have learned to communicate a lot better since coming here,” he added.

  Parents have said that their children have become healthier and more confident, recommending the club to friends.

  “Those who don’t understand rugby think it’s a very rough sport, but true rugby is something that is holistic and requires your entire body,” said Liu Ying, whose four-year-old daughter Adora attends rugby classes weekly. “She has become physically stronger, jumps further and falls ill less often.”

  At the same time, the Rangers have continued to promote the sport among adults, even travelling to smaller cities for exhibition matches.

  “In many cities, you have teams solely made up of foreigners,” Xia said.

  The team has seen reasonable success: The Chongqing Rangers are top in the region and came fourth in a national competition.

  The inclusion of rugby sevens as an Olympic event raised awareness in China, but the support that the game receives is a far cry from more popular sports like basketball and soccer.

  The Chinese Rugby Football Association did not respond to request for comment about the sport’s fortunes in China.

  However, back in Chongqing, there remains hope that the city of 30 million could someday produce a rugby star.

  “We’ll take it step-by-step,” said Wang Shengchun, whose four-year-old son Tianyou trains at Simba Rugby.

  “Maybe we’ll start with him joining the school team, then the provincial team before making it to the national team,” he said.
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