Taking coals to Newcastle – idiom; prov: to do something supposedly unnecessary; orig: Newcastle – an English town from which coal was shipped to other parts of England
You might say it’s an unlikely story – a host of american citizens introducing rugby to British schools. But then, you most likely haven’t met its author.
Mark Griffin founded Play Rugby USA, a ground-breaking non-profit that uses rugby as an instructional tool to assist disadvantaged children in Big apple, La and beyond, in 2005. Such have been its success that Griffin has now install a British offshoot, R4UK to further his pursuit of “a neater world through rugby” by working with girls and boys in inner-city London. Asked how he came to make the sort of move, Griffin raises an eyebrow.
“i presumed surely something very similar to our thing would exist in London,” he says, “however it didn’t. But each of the risk factors for the youngsters there are the exact same as they’re here. It’s the exact same programme.”
It took an opportunity meeting on the 2010 Churchill Cup, with Terry Burwell, a former competitions director of the Rugby Football Union who had spotted a niche in his home market, for Play Rugby USA to take the wholly unlikely step of exporting its educational mission to the united kingdom. In spite of everything, in line with tradition if not incontrovertible historical fact, rugby was invented in Britain, on the school that offers the sport its name.
America being a little less open to British tradition than other parts of the globe that were once shaded pink, Play Rugby USA, obvious to assert, is the made from conditions a global far from the manicured playing fields of Rugby School. But rugby is nonetheless at the rise within the States and Griffin can cite a survey by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association to back-up his statement that “rugby is the fastest growing team sport in America”. His success is behind an outsized portion of that growth.
Play Rugby USA takes rugby, predominantly in its seven-a-side form and using tag rules as opposed to tackles, into schools in areas equivalent to Queens and the Bronx in Ny and Bell Gardens in L. a.. Coaches, youth development mentors and accredited teachers then use the sport at the field and inside the classroom, to educate the virtues of teamwork, co-operation, dedication and perspiration. Activities are run in class hours and after, keeping kids off the streets and providing valuable opportunities for supervised exercise.
Despite some impressive achievements – including staging the yearly Ny Rugby Cup and sending scholarship-winning pupils to New Zealand to experience the world’s strongest rugby culture – Griffin still sees Play Rugby USA as a piece in progress. His account of its growth, however, shows why he felt confident enough to export it.
“We started in 2005 but didn’t start putting processes in place until 2006,” he adds, “and we’ve gone from 10 schools then to 267 now.
A better world through rugby is our vision, and we always focus on ‘rugby for good’. It is not just rugby. It’s essentially using rugby to assist kids improve wellness, to aid them be triumphant, which starts in education, after which it’s about empowering them to develop themselves and take charge in their own destiny. Rugby’s good for that, not only when they’re playing but within the classroom in addition.
I think the values we seek to impart are inherent within the game – integrity, honesty and camaraderie.
‘All those values are there’
Griffin’s next words – expressed along with his customary assurance – hint on the source of his enthusiasm for his sport.
“It is all taken with no consideration within the UK,” he says, “it’s handed to you on a plate to play rugby. All those values are there but you do not explicitly take into consideration them. Over here, it’s a part of the emblem of rugby, the way it identifies itself and the way it’s different from other sports. i feel it’s about respect especially, and likewise solidarity.”
Griffin – a perfect-fit 37-year-old who played US Super League rugby, at hooker for Old Blue, for 13 years – is British. After playing at Durham University and semi-professionally for Birmingham & Solihull, he moved to Ny to work for Barclays and ended up qualifying to symbolize the united states. He won nine caps for the Eagles, including two appearances against England’s second string; off the sphere he worked for 2 years as director of national highschool and junior rugby for the yankee governing body. Alongside the united states Rugby chief executive, Nigel Melville – another Englishman – Griffin played a key role in introducing the sport to ever greater numbers of yankee children.
Michael Lee/Play Rugby USA
“Rookie Rugby is ready tag rugby for elementary and middle-school kids,” Griffin says, of the yank-branded variety of the sport he and Melville created. “We do not have many facilities so we need to play tag, however it does enable a lot of girls to take part. Greater than 40% of our participants at Play Rugby USA are girls, and that i would think america has more girls playing rugby than most other nations.”
Now figuring out of a buzzing Manhattan office – and employing 12 staff full-time and as many as 50 part-time – Griffin approaches his work with this kind of muscular missionary zeal that might had been familiar to the 19th-century proselytisers who first spread rugby around the world. Though America had taken the unlucky decision to depart the fold 100 years before rugby appeared at the scene, it seem Griffin is on a one-man mission to bring it back:
When we started, there have been no kids playing rugby in Manhattan, none, and it was a perception people had that rugby was this crazy, dangerous game, something you heard about in college more at the social scale. So we almost needed to brand it as a tutorial thing, that’s what it has now become often known as in Big apple.
The challenges that include that perception of rugby, you get around them with some people and others are only stubborn. But , it is a big country, so if i’ve got a college saying no five times, I’ll just visit five others who say yes and I’ll have five teams playing rugby there.
Those challenges include the notion that rugby is just crazy, “football without pads”, but Griffin senses that out of doors factors – rugby’s readmission to the Olympics in 2016; football’s difficulties over head injuries increasing the appeal of a more safety conscious contact sport – at the moment are conspiring to assist him. While President Obama said he wouldn’t need a son of his to play football, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton (whose husband played rugby at Oxford) has endorsed Play Rugby USA. So, among other luminaries, has Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of latest York. As an advantage, the success of the project is beginning to influence the yank senior game.
“We’ve a number of youngsters who’ve come through Play Rugby USA and gone into clubs etc,” Griffin says. “In high schools we play sevens and at under-13 and under-15 we play equal numbers – seven, 10, 12 – whatever they’ve available. In an effort to become under-17s in a year or so after which maybe under-19s. We’ve then created an academy for the highest 30 girls and the head 30 boys by invitation only, they usually compete against high-school teams in summer sevens leagues.
“Beyond that, they could visit clubs, or after all they could visit college –
most of the youngsters would like to play at school and we will be able to and do help them with that. Most of our youngsters will play in college after which get back. Portion of our programme is to encourage them to visit college and to continue playing.”
And therein, as far as Griffin’s hopes for R4UK are concerned, lies the rub. Griffin’s British project – a part of a hoped-for “global rugby collaborative” of developmental and academic organisations – launched in summer 2012 in Lambeth, not a London borough from which any British university, never mind knowledgeable club or national team, would expect to attract too many players. R4UK aims to exploit rugby to offer children from disadvantaged areas a boost in every little thing in their lives.
Griffin says: “We had 60 sessions in six schools within the 10 weeks as much as Christmas. The after-school piece of the programme would be manage in February and it’ll expand in the summertime term. It’s about making a model to appear to copy in other boroughs and other cities, pending the funding.
“That is the key. The continued, never-ending challenge for us as a charity is finding the funding.”
As good causes go, Mark Griffin’s is especially worth supporting – on each side of the Atlantic.
Michael Lee/Play Rugby USA
