West Ghana, New York – Fresh off of discussing the sustainability of the USA Rugby Super League, USA Rugby drops a bombshell in August. The Super League is no more. This has caused a massive ripple effect in the US rugby community, let us take a look at all the divisions including the old Super League.
Super League – The teams that formed it have now been added to Division 1 for the upcoming 2012 season, although some like NYAC have to wait til fall 2013 to play D1. In place of this USA Rugby has created the Elite Cup for Spring 2013. In that, they will take the 8 teams from Super League and have them play for the title from then on, it will be the top 8 or quater-final teams from the previous years D1 playoffs.
Division 1 – It is pretty late in the pre-season for this news to occur and it seems that, and the fact that schedules have already been put together, the Super League teams must wait til next season. That said, I think the likely winners will come from one of the following teams:
1 Belmont Shore
2 Glendale
3 OPSB
4 Palmer College
5 Chicago Lions
6 OMBAC
7 Chicago Griffins (RWU’s Matt McCarthy ran with their Old Boys in Aspen)
Division 2 – With D1 revamped like it is, there is less motivation for really good D2 teams to move up to D1 until they feel their ready. It appears most the playoff teams from D2 last year stay where they were. So looking at this is the most list of most likely suspects to win D2:
1 Wisconsin
2 SD Old Aztecs
3 Santa Rosa
4 Rocky Gorge
5 Omaha
6 Naples
7 ORSU
8 Middlesex
9 Buffalo (2nd Side… First Side is in D1 Empire GU)
Division 3 – The Chain effect of the D2 teams not moving up means that though some really good D3 teams move up like the Syracuse Chargers, some chose to stay where they are. Some of this is due to location and find quality opposition in the area like South Dakota’s Northern State. Others like the second teams of large clubs playing in D3 can’t move up, take last years Champions the New Orleans. The most likely candidates to take it all are:
1 New Orleans D3
2 Tucson
3 Northern State (SD)
4 Santa Rosa
5 South Bay
6 KC Blues D3
7 Budd Bay (WA)
As we all know, the game is played on the field and not on paper. So it will take up until sometime in the spring of 2013 for it to shape up and see how many of these 8 teams in each division actually make the quater-finals.
That is it for me for now. Please feel free to comment below, look for and “Like” our Facebook Rugby Wrap Up Page and follow us on Twitter @RugbyWrapUp, @JunoirBlaber, @Declan Yeats and @Mathew Drew Turner, respectively.
And as always, stay low and keep pumping those legs.
