Op-Ed by Grant Cole
24 October 2015
The Club Department at USA Rugby decided to begin experimenting last Spring with an informal club rankings poll for the Premiership and D1 teams. This past week, after poking and prodding agreeable voters to vote on the Top 30 Club teams in America, USA Club Rugby released its initial in-season rankings poll (pictured above)
USA Club Rugby "invited 20 selectors to vote in the poll, with a balance of 40% club/competition representatives, 30% High Performance coaches, and 30% community journalists/pundits." So it's a fairly decent cross-section of folks who pay attention to rugby in America. The voters are asked to vote on their Top 30. Those thirty clubs are then assigned value based on where the individual voter ranks them (i.e. Ranking 1 receives 30 points, Ranking 2 receives 29, Ranking 3 receives 28, and so on to Ranking 30 receiving 1 point). The Clubs that receive votes for that week are averaged based on the number of voters, then the poll is produced based on the averages. The average value is used because voting input is not yet consistently applied by the voters week-to-week (i.e., not every voter who agreed to vote is doing so, yet). From the Top 30 of the voters, a Top 20 rankings poll is derived.
Club and Competition Representatives are asked to vote because they, at the very least, know the clubs in their areas and their competitions. Initially, these selectors may suffer from an echo chamber effect, because they tend to spend a LOT of time focused on their own clubs and competitions. They do not always pay attention to what is happening in other Prem/D1 Competitions (especially if their competition does not play into any post-season competition outside of their own). However, the Club Department expects that as the poll progresses, these representatives will take the time to follow what is happening in other competitions and become more well informed voters in the poll.
USA Rugby's High Performance Coaches (HP) are asked to vote because they spend an inordinate amount of time watching video of matches that Prem/D1 teams choose to film and to share with them (this is the moment when Prem/D1 players realize that they can get seen every week IF their clubs will just invest in a moderately decent camera set-up to make this happen. Shameless Plug: Contact me for help getting a really good camera set-up from T5RDG!). Basically, HP sees a LOT of Prem/D1 rugby every week, thus they are qualified to make the assessments that lead to informed voting.
Finally, there are the journalist and pundits of the rugby community that were invited. I am in this group. It is worth noting that numerous journalists and pundits were asked to vote and many declined the opportunity. American Rugby journalist and pundits are mostly volunteer or self-funded, although that seems to be changing with the America's Rugby News & Rugby Today models. We read each other's work, we browse the scores standings and rosters in the USA Club Rugby CMS system (Links at the end of this article). Some of us routinely comb through the various and sundry Prem/D1 Facebook pages (or account in the case of Rocky Gorge), Twitter accounts, Instagram accounts and webpages looking for video, updates, scores, rosters, and other club news. These range from pretty good (Glendale, Seattle, KC Blues) to non-existent. We also chat with some of coaches, admins and players about their matches and competitions. In the end, some of us get to know the capabilities and potential of the clubs a lot better than we did last year or the year before. This all helps when voting on this poll.
The Club rankings poll is a positive step from USA Rugby. A product adding value for little cost that can create buzz and engagement. Broadcasters have been telling USA rugby for years that clubs need to take themselves more seriously, market themselves and their competitions better, create more buzz and engagement around the competitions. This poll is a step in that direction.
Official standings Links by competition:
American Rugby PremiershipBC Premier League
Mid-Atlantic Conference
Midwest Conference
Northern California Conference (idle)
Pacific Northwest Conference (idle)
Pacific Rugby Premiership (idle)
Red River Rugby Conference (idle)
Southern California Conference (idle)
I want to give a personal shout-out to Ryan Ginty and the crew at Next Level Rugby. Without their coverage of 70% of the ARP matches, there would be no way for pundits to actually see how good Mystic River and Old Blue really are this year.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of Grant Cole at RuckBottom and do not represent directly the views and policies of USA Rugby or its affiliated clubs.