What variations should be used to promote rugby in China?

One of the problems I've encountered when trying to promote rugby in China is a general agreement of what kind of rugby should be prioritised to grow the sport here. By this I mean, should we just stick with the traditional XVs or the 'Olympic' variation of 7s? What about touch or tag (especially when introducing to young people)? Or even the lesser known variations of beach rugby and 10s rugby? I also want to mention Rugby Union's closest cousins, Rugby League and American Football (I know this might sound strange to the rugby purist, but in the context of China, these need to be discussed).

Essentially, rugby (and team contact sports in general) is quite an alien thing to Chinese people. They just don't seem to fit in with the nation's current favourite sports and past times like badminton, ping pong, taichi (and other martial arts), dancing, running, basketball and football (soccer) do. These are popular based on personal experience.

I'll briefly try outline how each of these are played in China, then give my opinion of what we should be pushing towards in order to get more Chinese people interested in rugby. It would be great if people could comment and give their opinions too. I know this may cause some disagreement. Also, due to the lack of information and transparency on rugby in China, I may have the odd thing wrong, so feel to correct me on anything.

XVs

At the moment, on the Mainland, XVs is predominantly played by the male expat and foreign population of China. There are probably around 15 expat style teams now, with one or two seeming to pop up every year. Most of these teams have guys who grew up playing rugby and are used to XVs and therefore want to carry on playing this form of the game. However, with the distances involved in travelling around China to play rugby, it's very hard to fund these matches. Trying to get a full 15 plus subs to travel 1000km for an 80 minute game a few times a year is hard, especially when most teams will have squads of around 30 to start with (including many students). However, things seem to be heading in the right direction with a 'national' league being formed, split regionally. There are some universities playing XVs too, being made up only of Chinese players, but not many. Also, the PLA has a XVs team competing in the Hong Kong leagues.

Sevens

There is the odd 7s tournament that the expat teams will play in, but due to it's fitness requirements, it's generally something avoided by the more social players. However, 7s is the main focus of the Chinese Rugby Football Association (CRFA), with provinces competing in a national series for both men and women's teams. From what I've seen, there are around 6-8 men's provincial teams (including the PLA) and around 7-9 women's teams who competed in this season's circuit. This is of course partly due to China's emphasis on promoting Olympic sports but funding must also have something to do it with, i.e. a 7s circuit is more financially sustainable than a XVs league. This development can also be seen with the Chinese national men's team generally being in the top 5 of Asia at 7s but well outside the top 10 at XVs and the women's team always in the top 3 at 7s but further down the ladder in XVs format. Also, women's expat rugby seems to play slightly more 7s than their male counterparts, due to teams having less players to select.

Tens

10s rugby is a format popular throughout Asia and is starting to get a little bigger further afield too. It's not quite as tiring as 7s but doesn't require as many players as XVs, so it's a good alternative to help grow the game. In Wuhan, our senior team Wuhan Baiji, generally play more 10s as part of the Sino 10s League and other stand alone tournaments. Often, we can just about get the right amount of guys to an away tournament but at home we can easily put in two teams. The odd non-expat Chinese team will play a little 10s, such as Shandong province, the PLA or some university teams. But so far, not many Chinese teams have bought in to it, which is a shame as it could be a good way to bring the more XVs orientation expat teams and more Olympic focused provincial and university teams together.

Touch

With many Chinese people not being too keen on physical contact, touch has slowly started to grow around China. Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong all host local leagues and tournaments, with China also starting to get involved with Touch at an international level. The small teams, the ability to have mixed gender teams, it's simplicity to understand and minimal equipment needed all make it attractive. When I first started to get people playing rugby in Wuhan, touch was how I did it. The biggest problem I saw however was with such low skills, nobody was scoring any tries!

Tag

Tag is seemingly non-existent on the mainland outside a couple of children's development programmes such as Shanghai's Sport For All. This seems partly due to it being hard to actually buy tags here. It's similarity to Touch seems to often stop it from growing and will only be changed if there's some big push from above to help clubs and schools buy tags. It does seem to getting more popular in other countries without much of a rugby history due to certain charity initiatives like the Tag Rugby Trust.

Beach rugby

Generally a very social format of the sport, beach rugby can be played as contact, touch or tag. It only needs 5 players per side but also requires something most places won't have access to, a beach! However, there has been the odd beach tournament hosted in places like Qingdao.

Rugby League

The younger cousin of Union (and a sport I love just as much), Rugby League has made little impact in China. However, there has been a lot of talk of NRL teams playing here over the last couple of years, due to the Chinese company Huawei sponsoring one the teams. But with Union having the power of Olympic 7s and a 25 years head start getting the game on the Mainland, it's hard to see how League can do much here.

American Football

OMG! Mentioning American Football on a topic to do with rugby! This is basically due to the confusion from Chinese people at what rugby is. Both are referred to as olive shaped ball, but you are able to distinguish them using the prefixes of British style or American style. However, it's rare any Chinese person would use these prefixes unless they already know something about the sports (which is very rare). As American Football is more well known due it's media presence and large annual events like the Super Bowl, Chinese people will generally know more about American Football than Rugby. The main reason I am mentioning this though, is because the CRFA are officially supporting the growth of American Football in China by helping them set up a professional league consisting of 6-8 teams, containing both American and Chinese players (the latter generally coming out of the sports universities). The reasons for this could be to do with money or something else but it's something anyone in China who has an interest in rugby should be aware of. For me, it doesn't make too much sense, but it is what it is.

So what do I think?

Well, obviously it's got to be a combination of some of the above that needs to be used to promote rugby in China. Each have positives and negatives and can get different people into the sport.

For my own purposes at Baiji Rugby Coaching in Wuhan, I'm mainly using Tag Rugby to promote the sport with the aim of developing 7s rugby over XVs. Tag rugby seems by far the best way to get kids playing rugby as it's simple and seems to develop attacking play better than Touch as it gives them more chance to score tries and therefore makes it more exciting for them. The reason I think 7s is preferable here is partly to fit in with what the CRFA are doing but it also seems like it would be more cost and resource effective in the long term and will get kid's playing more competitive rugby sooner. I also think it's less physical nature will help it in the eyes of many Chinese people and so could potentially fit in with the culture more easily.

At a senior level, I think 10s is crucial. There are always going to be the XVs loving foreigners playing in China and China will still have it's love for Olympic sports for a long time. So to integrate these teams more, 10s needs to be used as a bridge to improve overall quality of play in China. If these two groups can work together more, rugby in China will be stronger in the future.

Taken from Ross Carbutt