WHAT IF?

what if for a second we did have a rugby "league", but it was indoors and it was 7's.
next to rugby my next Passion is Arena Football. now two things pop into peoples minds when they here arena football. 1) what is that? 2) that sounds lame. but dont knock it till you try it. a few years ago i took my fiance to her first arena football game and ever since then she has been hooked. she loves the atmosphere and the hard hits. 2 things that rugby, rugby 7's brings to the table. now don't mistake AFL (arena football league) for other indoor football leagues. AFL has been around now 25+ years and at its peak was averaging 13-16k a game. two things rugby here have yet to achieve at lest in the sense of having a league.

now the question comes of how to make it work, what style? how would the rules play out? and how do you turn a profit? 1) it would be 7v7, same rules/laws but of course there would have to be some take aways and slight changes. 2) there would be a 2 foot touch line running along the sides of the playing field. instead of 5 m. line outs make it 3-4 m. for kick  off's, no 10 m. but 5 m. the ball has to travel. and for the goal posts, in the AFL the gap between the goal post is 9 feet, and so the same would be for indoor rugby. 3) think of it like this, there would be x teams representing cities and or regions. instead of teams representing that one city there could be organizations representing a region. such as maybe for here(SF Bay Area) instead of there being a team just called San Francisco bolts(made up names), many rugby fans or fans in general may feel like this team only represents SF people, so they could be called Bay Area Bolts or Nor Cal Bolts. and so on for others locations as seen fit. here's where it gets "fun" for planning stages and playing. each team/region would have to host a 2 day event. arenas would need to be set in the 7k minimum and 15k max. the events will be held every other weekend so to be spread out over a period of time/months. but of course this would be amount of teams that are in the league. so if there are 12 teams, then there would be 4 months with 3 weekends set aside in each month. each event or "stops" would consists of 2 days. and for extra money in the bag, each stop could be sponsored. similar to what we have now for HSBC 7's.

now i know just reading this makes you go, this sounds plain stupid. but again just bare with me and think about it. rugby is exploding all over north America and the obvious choice to start a low cost team is to start at 7s. but here's the catch that could make it one day work. currently there are three major indoor sport leagues, Arena football, MISL (indoor soccer) and NLL(lacrosse). the pitch to those owners is this, why pay  $800-50k per player a year, with a set roster ranging from 15-28 players (guessing on pay rate and actual amount of players used or signed to each team) when you can start off with paying 400-800$ a player with a roster of 12 players and a few IR listed. And instead of having to put down big money to rent a large field such as a soccer stadium or football stadium , you can pay im sure half that rate to use a arena. and almost guarantee a sell out for x amount of days your team is hosting one of the stops. if an arena is only say 14k large. the owner only has to worry about selling 28k tickets for two days. now this seem's crazy right? wrong. whats the number one thing we Americans love? violence, hard hitting smash mouth sports. hence the reason why even though the NFL is only based in america, we have nearly rivaled majority soccer leagues and other major sports around the globe. because we are willing to pay top dollar to enjoy  those few hours every other weekend. what would you rather spend money on, 100 dollars for nose bleed seats for two people at a nfl game or, 100 bucks for two and two - three rows away from the action of a 7's event.


to put it in simple terms, grab everything amazing about 7s, from fan experience to the amount of games that can be played, and put it on a smaller field, and smaller venue. its cheap and cost effective , from a owners point of view. from a fan view, its another chance to watch rugby matches live, and less expensive way to watch.

why not just focus on starting a 15's or actual out door 7's pro league? well why not. im in favor of those ideas also and trust me i can ramble on about those to. but if "WE" want to defend gold at rio, major steps need to be made now with and for usa rugby. yes that's great we now have academies to feed our mens 7s squad. but it doesn't do us any good to have those teams play 90% of tournaments here against local mens and colleges sides. we need them to go out and play in as many international events. send them to south Africa, try and get into the JP premiership and so on. with this 7's league it helps , not 100% answer but helps, filter that much more talent out from the rest. people will fallow money, and the money will show whos worth watching and not. if your talented then you ll get a contract and that owner will spend money on you, if your not then why waste money?

as usual i know this idea has many many many flaws and i accept it! but it is a dream and a thought. who knows maybe 10,15,20 years from now when we hopefully by then have a true 15's, and 7's competition here in N. America someone will say, hey why not try playing "Arena Rugby"?. but till that happens, this is the best i got.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xobir3SVC_I  : link to Truro 7s, baisicly the way the feild is layed out is how am trying to explain it (missing is the goal posts)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isA9Hz2Yr5c : highlights to what AFL is in case some of you havent seen a game before.