Mexico Rugby League Q&A part 1

A few weeks i contacted Mexico Rugby League about wanting to do a Q&A, after they agreed to i decided to take a different approach then i normally do. i decided to let the fans of rugby league or those interested in hearing from Mexico rugby league ask the questions. i honestly figured that only a few would be listed, i was shocked and blown away by the large response. in the mist of trying to figure out what to do with all the questions i reached out to Guillermo of the Black and Blues who will be handling the first part of the questions. The second part of these questions will be posted once they have been sent in.
 A major shout out to all those who submitted there questions on TotalRL.com .

-Evil Homer

-bird

-londonrlfan

-JCrabtree

-TheLegendOfTexEvans

-deluded pom?

-flyingking

-kiwis 13 6

-Futtocks

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Q-Have you made contact with RL organizations in the USA, Canada and/or Jamaica?

Guillermo Ruiz Buenrostro- Yes and no. We did it as Mexico Rugby League, we didn't as Rugby League de Jalisco. Because or conference is pretty new (we started last September) we want to be well-established before we contact other teams and organizations. There are just three teams in our conference, Black and Blues, Huskies and Vikings, and only Black and Blues has enough players to play a XIII match, while the other two barely can play 7s.     

Q-Is there any difficulty being recognized as rugby league and not rugby union?

GB- Oh, yes. We're talking about a country where rugby has little recognition, and here we are, telling them there's a different flavor of rugby. Personally, I gave up trying to explain the difference to neophytes. We, the Black and Blues, play both codes, but we focus on league and you can see that in our play style: also, we're the first sports initiation school that offers Gaelic football and rugby league, in addition to soccer, and parents still do not understand the difference between the three codes. So during the first months children end up training together, and according to their skills we try to lead them to one of three sports, expecting them to be those who want to keep training.

Q-How did you come to wanting to start the sport in Mexico and your connection to the game?

GB- Well, it is a curious story. I was an engineering student back in 1996, and one day one of my teacher, whom was from Sheffield, showed up to class with a ball in the shape of an egg. It was a physics class, and he was teaching us how parabolic trajectories worked with the help of the ball. I can't recall the class, but what I can remember is that at the end of the class our professor asked if we had any questions, and I raised my hand and asked what in the name of Alfred E. Neuman was that odd-shaped ball. "A rugby ball," he said. Then he asked if we wanted to play that sport. We hadn't even knew what it was, so he explained us what it was in his broken Spanish and then asked if we wanted to learn how to play. So a few of us, five to be exact, started to train with him and a couple of post-docs. Our name came from our first match against his friends from Great Britain and Ireland whom where working in Guadalajara at the time. It was a massacre. It was a sevens match, league rules, against men whom where in its late forties or early fifties, and still managed to beat us 80 to nil, one Sunday morning. Next Monday we weren't able to climb up the stairs to the classroom, and we had a lot of bruises. "An impressive collection of black and blues you are," our teacher said. When we understand what a black and blue was, we liked it and chose it as the name of our club, Black & Blues. Sadly, by January 2002 all the players graduated and, because there were no other clubs active in Guadalajara, we disbanded. And in that very same year, but in August, another team, this time rugby union, was founded, but there was no way we could be in touch with them. I didn't even knew of them until 2007, and by that time I was living in Canada. Eventually I returned to Mexico, and in 2011, while studying another engineering degree, I heard that the Pan American Games would have rugby among their sports. So I tried to bring back my team, and started the Black and Blues. Notice the ampersand was replaced with a word. We joined the only organization of rugby, and started to play. Eventually, we learned of Mexico Rugby League and joined them, a joyous day for me, because I was molded by rugby league and it's the sport I love. 

 Q-Is touch rugby league played in México?

GB- Well, yes and no. We try to introduce people to the game and I try to use tag and touch when they are starting so they learn how to play before they learn how to tackle. Also, touch rugby has allowed us to have mixed teams, such as Vikings and Huskies. But they don't want to play touch; they want to play full contact, except we still don't have enough people to do so. However, we decided kids should start with touch league, so the parents can get used to the full game when the kids become teenagers.  

Q-How are you using 9s and Eurotag to develop new teams.

GB- They're part of our player building plan. We begin with as little as six players in an eurotag team, then upgrade them to niners at both full-contact and eurotag, then to full thirteens. Because it is easier to build a team with six players, we hope to end this year with as much as ten teams in our conference, and start building up from there. Also, eurotag allows us to have mixed teams and to use surfaces that we consider dangerous in full-contact game, such as dirt and concrete, and even smaller fields with artificial grass. There are lots of fields of dirt where people play soccer, but we don't want our people to risk their skin by playing rugby league there. Not even for ten minutes. The scars are horrible and don't have a chance to heal if we play and train week after week in that surface. So we end up playing eurotag there.   

Q-Have you attracted any sponsorship?

GB-Not yet. Most of the people who can write a check want to see us play at least three matches a week, even if on different venues, so they can profit from advertising. We don't have enough teams to do so, so they won't sponsor us... yet. Therefore, we end up paying all the bill by ourselves. I don't mind paying so my team can play and grow, and my players help me with the bills, but most of my players are students, and thus, broke. My team is the only team billing the players less than $2 US dollars a week: we charge 20 pesos (us$1.40). That, with a few bucks some friends give us each month, pay the field, the balls, and the uniforms. The school we just started may, eventually, fund us, but right now there are too little students. We're non-for-profit, but the rules for non-profit organizations in Mexico are asphyxiating, big companies have limited allowances, and small companies want levels of exposition we currently don't have. It's a vicious circle. 

Q-Is there a possibility of attracting a retired/twilight year’s big name in another sport to be a rugby league poster boy? 

GB-I wish. Perhaps when we are fully established as a league and play regular games. Right now, the National Conference has four teams, (Black and Blues, Spartans, Silverbacks and Grizzlies) and our games are sporadic, one each six weeks. We need more teams before we can think of attracting a big name, because I suspect almost no one in Mexico will know who the big name is. We're talking about a country where the 2011 Rugby World Cup got a single line in the sports section of the most important TV News programmers ("And the champion of the rugby world cup was New Zealand. Back to the studio.") and the 2013 Rugby League World Cup got a similar treatment ("And finally, the winner of the rugby world cup of this year is Australia. See you tomorrow, and good night"). They didn't even said there was a difference between rugby league and rugby union. They don't care for almost any sport except soccer.   

Q-low are you attracting Mexican gridiron players into league?

GB- This is difficult to answer. Last year we tried to attract the guys from the American football team of my university. They were tired very soon, couldn't keep up with the pace of the game, and went back to gridiron. However they started using our tackle style. Another thing that happened is that gridiron players trained at evening and night, while we were assigned the midday slot, and here in Guadalajara it can be hot even in winter. There's more: gridiron has a full tournament and players can play each week for six months a year, while we don't, again, because of the lack of teams. But, perhaps, the most peculiar answer we get is that most gridiron players don't want to switch to rugby because rugby, either code, "is too dangerous." So when my players get that answer they start bullying the gridiron players, and so they end up moving away from us. After all, what are you, colonel Sanders? Chicken? A couple gridiron players, however, started to train with us. They've never been happier and are among the first to show up at trainings. I still want to contact them and attract them, but I don't want to steal players to any team; we're a formative team, after all. 

Q-Is there rugby league coaching/materials available in Spanish for those who do and want to coach? 

GB- Well, I've been in charge of that, and not just for coaching, but for refereeing too. I don't want to translate the available material; not only because of the enormous amount of material in English, but also because that material isn't always  suitable to the reality of Mexico. So far I have translated and annotated the Laws of the Game and developed what I call a Level 0 Introduction to Rugby League, and I'm still working in the Level 1 Introduction to Coaching and Introduction to Refereeing manuals. Of course, I need time to develop the materials, and I certainly hope when we join the Rugby League International Federation they allow me to translate and adapt their material. The problem is the time available I have is minimal: I have to study, work, train, coach and teach, and I wish my weeks have eight days and my days 28 hours. And the English levels of my colleagues ain't what you may say "fluid", so the translating responsibilities are mostly mine. 

Q-What sports are popular in Mexico and what sports would have the best fit for RL?

GB- This is soccer country! Seriously, we have a ridiculous amount of soccer teams here; last time I checked, there were 311 professional teams and almost 8 million amateur players. Apart from soccer there are professional tournaments for indoor soccer, volleyball, baseball, and basketball, and amateur tournaments for almost every sport, ranking from soccer (of course) to cricket and quidditch. Yes, Virginia, people play quidditch in Tijuana and Cricket in Guadalajara and Mexico City. And I can't find enough people to play a match of rugby league against my team... Anyway, apart from rugby union and, perhaps, gridiron football, I consider the sports that would have the best fit for rugby league are track and field. And not even all of them. My best players have been rejected from the track and field team because they where slow; and well, yes, they are slow but they still can run a hundred meters in twelve seconds, which I can't anymore. I have three of them in my team. Another sport we can consider is handball; the handball tournament is small, but growing, and there are players that can't quite grasp the essence of handball but are excellent for rugby league; I have one of those in my rooster, and his ball handling is amazing. Soccer players are usually scared of rugby league, but if they overcome their fear and learn to respect the referee, they become good players. Gridiron players get tired too soon, but we can fix that with a few sessions of training. and last but not least, basketball players. They don't fear contact as much as other sports players, like to run, and know how to handle the ball; all they need to learn is how to tackle. I also have a couple of those players in my rooster. Most of my players have a soccer past; they grew up with the sport, after all, because that's all they had available. How I wish I knew rugby league when I was a kid...

*If any one wants to fallow Mexico Rugby League or the Black & Blues please fallow them on many platforms of social media.
Facebook-  https://www.facebook.com/BlackBluesRugby
Website-http://blackbluesrugby.com/
Website-  http://mexico.latinheatrl.com/

* There will be a spanish translation for those in mexico and beyond, sadly i am in the process of moving to a different state and will be out of internet access for a while. i will post and pass along the translation as soon as i have them complete along with the second half.

* Habrá una traducción española de los de México y más allá, por desgracia estoy en el proceso de pasar a un estado diferente y voy a estar fuera de acceso a internet por un tiempo. voy a publicar y transmitir la traducción tan pronto como tengo a completar a lo largo de la segunda mitad.