NEW YORK, NY – We’ve got a Christmas Eve 2-part Weekend Rugby Wrap-Up for your rugby reading pleasure today. Be sure to see our Aviva Premiership, RaboDirect Pro 12 and French Top 14 recap… But here, we’ve got USA 7s & Rugby World Cup news.
USA 7s Rugby Academies: USA Rugby announced the creation of an Olympic Developmental Programs. The program revolves around academies on the west coast, Glendale, Colorado and Chicago. Our friend, Curtis The Honorable goes into great detail on it. The feeling here is that while this is a great boost to the game in the USA, it’s bothersome that there is no northeast or east coast representation. But we’ve been told that’s in the works. Fingers crossed.
Speaking of 7s...
You should really make every effort to get to the Las Vegas 7s in February. It’s the one time every year that you get to see the HSBC 7s Series’ international stars in the USA – and it’s Sin City, so that’s reason for people from everywhere to converge in the desert. We’ll be there cheering for our very own RWU family – Matthew Hawkins of Team USA & Mathew Drew Turner of England.
RWC 2011 Report: How valuable is the Rugby World Cup to a host nation? Well, we’ve finally got some concrete data. Rugby World Cup Limited released their report on RWC 2011, underlining the positive impacts to the host nation, New Zealand. Here are the bullet points of the report:
- NZ$1.73 billion boost to New Zealand
- Equivalent to 29,000 jobs sustained in one year
- Major shop window for NZ delivered to 207 territories
- 133,000 international visitors
Those are some pretty gaudy numbers. England can only hope for more of the same kind of impacts in RWC 2015. We wonder, however, if those kinds of numbers would be achieved in the United States. Hopefully, we’ll find out.
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.
