Good afternoon all. It's a beautiful day outside, the world (at least according the definition of those in the financial services industry) would appear to be staring into the abyss once again and I have found a few moments to bring the old blog up to date. It's a pleasure to reach you via the tremendously clever communication system brought into being by the efforts of club stalwart Brother Paul T. McGee. Did you know that he personally entered everyone's email addresses into the system? Well he did. "If I didn't do it, it wasn't going to happen," says the reclusive billionaire. That's the spirit.
Like an old ocean-going liner, the rugby season is beginning to get underway. However, at the last minute, the HKRFU has taken the rather odd 11th hour decision to play the knockout cup before the league season, meaning there will be no league rugby until November 8. Lord knows why, but there it is. The knockout cup will start when the league had been due to kick off on October 11.
Competitive rugby of a kind began last weekend with the Valley 15s, a competitition that really demonstrates why it is a good idea to reduce team sizes if you cut down match time. Nonetheless, rugby is rugby, and the Club boys will be disappointed to have succumbed to three successive defeats. With a growing casualty list to compound his woes, Coach Quinton Wrigley's blood pressure will be rising well before the real shooting match begins. There was better fortune for Dragons and Ice who won their divisions and claimed the club's first silverware of the season. As I understand Murray Sargant's epistle on the subject, Dragons' final came down to a draw and it had to be decided by a sprint race which 'Usain' Payne won.
On an entirely different subject, I would like to recommend H.E. Andrew Boucher's blog. He does appear to be preoccupied with one issue in particular, but his peerless style and the contributions of some other notable Scorps make this a highly entertaining read. Take a look now on
http://www.rugbyisnotbroken.blogspot.com/
Finally, I have one or two further points to make on the issue of team names, or the absence thereof. Firstly and most importantly, let's be absolutely clear that the greater good of the section is of paramount importance to everyone involved. We all want a system under which teams co-operate as much as possible and in which players play for higher and lower teams than their accustomed team when selected to do so.
But I do not believe that changing the team names is the best way to achieve this - it contributes to the appearance of 'one club' but I'm not so sure about whether it brings that reality any closer. I'm inclined to think that worthy ideal can only be fully achieved if management and the selectors are able to enforce selections by bringing meaningful penalties to bear if people disappear when they are asked to play for a team that is not their preferred one.
At the moment, I believe it is fair to say that a majority of players feel that they have lost something important to their rugby experience without having been consulted on the change. A poll on my previous posting revealed 59% against replacing team names with numbers, 25% in favour and 15% indifferent. There were 32 respondents, which shows you how few people really read the Blog. But I also suspect the majority of these were Club and Drags players. A straw poll of club stalwarts from other teams certainly suggested that there is even stronger support for team names elsewhere in the section.
I admire and support the goal behind this initiative, but I disagree profoundly with the method and, should anyone care, I will not be using the numbers myself. Nor, I suspect, will we see the Sequins' Corner being renamed "The Corner Formerly Known as the Sequins' Corner" (and I can't take credit for that one) or any talk of "Mighty" FC4. In any case, I think there has been more than enough from me on this issue and you will be relieved to hear that I am going to pipe back down and concentrate on rugby.
Harps
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The Blog is Back
Gentlemen
The Blog is back for its second season of crisp analysis and aimless banter. There are rumours that we will shortly be taking this content to a newly revamped Rugby Section website masterminded by Brother Paul McGee, who has recently taken a vow of silence, but for the time being, we are live again at http://www.hkfcrugbysection.blogspot.com/.
I am quite happy to take the Blog's content into an official HKFC portal. After all, this Blog has been officially sanctioned from its beginning. And I love the idea that PT is pushing of an integrated web platform for the section: one that will allow information, team lists, results and so on to be easily distributed to the whole section and that will enable the build-up of an invaluable archive of data. But whether we are here or on a new uber-website, the Blog will never become a tame noticeboard for the section's leadership, even though it exists to support, celebrate and inform the HKFC rugby section. I may be a bit of a weapon, but I will never be a tool...
Because it would be a sad day if 'we' at the Blog felt uncomfortable to be critics when criticism is a fair response, either in assessing performances on the pitch, or decisions made in the Club's boardroom, more normally known as the Sportsman's.
Indeed, I would like to start this season's Blog on the offensive. It is my understanding that the noble and ancient team names within the section will be abandoned in favour of depressingly bland team numbers. That is to say: firsts, seconds, thirds and so on. For those new to the club, and for clarity, the six club men's teams, in order, are: Club, Dragons, Scorpions, Select, Sequins and Bulls. The ladies' team is called Ice (and I confess I am not sure what happens to that under the new numbers system).
The reasoning behind abolishing the team names (as if it were possible) is that having team names and strong identities for each team discourages movement of players between the teams and restricts players' and coaches' thinking to their own little world. In short, so the argument goes, the team names are divisive, create silo mentalities and hold back the section as a whole.
It's easy to follow the logic of the argument, but there are two powerful reasons why it is a misguided initiative and destined to immediate failure.
Firstly, consider the motivations of a rugby player taking the field. He or she plays for his or her own pride in what they do; they may play for a coach sometimes; but I believe that, for the largest part, they will play for their team. They will play for the people around them and for the identity of the team and, without wishing to become too prosaic, its spirit. The spirit is created by the people that get together with our player every week to train and play rugby. But the spirit of the past players, in the way that it influences the players still there who remember them and what has gone before, means that every rugby team is, if you like, a distinct fabric into which a large number of personalities, past and present, are woven.
It sounds rather obvious, but the idea of the team is the essential building block of rugby life -its DNA. And a team is not effective as some kind of loose, technical grouping that serves an abstract greater good. When people go out to play, they cannot be expect to think of and play for several hundred other people in the rugby section. They cannot be expected to think of themselves as part of one team of 105 players lining up in seven matches on Saturday. They are part of a squad, a team, that can only give its all in its own game. Ask rugby players to think beyond that, or to play for more than that, and you are missing the point of the game.
The team name is like a flag or battle standard. It's what the captain shouts to rally the team on the pitch. The aura of the name creates a strangely potent bond between the players that it joins together. If you've ever played the game, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. The Club is full of teams that have attracted incredible loyalty down the years and developed quite distinct cultures of their own. These distinctions aren't big but they are important. It's to do with they way you play (or the way you think you play) and the personalities in your team and the kind of chatter they create.
In HKFC, teams have always defined themselves against the other teams, which isn't surprising. Every team - maybe every group of individuals - naturally likes to differentiate itself and stand out. Remember Bulls' red socks; Select's "Mighty" sobriquet and their bauhinia jackets; Sequins' Corner and their preposterous waistcoats; Dragons' sense of us-against-the-world-when they were the Dvision One whipping boys and no-one wanted to play for them. When I thought I would have to leave Hong Kong a couple of years ago, the-then Scorpions captain wrote me a very kind letter with a Scorps' letterhead and implored me to remember that I would always be a Scorp.
I clearly remember one player declaring to anyone who would care to listen at a Captain's Dinner that he "embodied the spirit of Bulls." I have no idea what he meant (although I bet I would if I were a Bull) but it's hard to imagine anyone saying "I embody the spirit of co-operation across the rugby section" and feeling proud of it. It's a worthy ideal, but it's empty when we consider why we play the game. We all love the rugby section as a whole and we all want the whole Club to do well. It's just that we play for a team, not a section, and that team should have a name, an identity and a spirit.
The second reason follows on from that and is less fundamental, less philosophical and more practical. It won't work. At a very simple level, people will continue to use these team names for ever and aye. I went to university in a city where the biggest, nastiest and best nightclub was still called Sindie's despite the fact that it had been called about three other things in the twenty-odd years since it was last Sindie's. When people like names, they stick.
And it's not going to alter players' willingness or ability to move up the teams. There are plenty of players in the Club and Dragons teams today who started in Scorps, Select and Bulls. Good and committed players will always be ambitious to play for the best team that they can.
Nor, I fear, is such a cosmetic change going to alter coaches' attitudes much. Coaches are naturally dedicated to their own team, and so they should be. I don't think the following conversation will ever happen:
Coach A: Right, I am delighted that four of my best players have been asked to play for the team above me. It's always a great pleasure to support the section as a whole. May I ask you if you will kindly provide me with your four best players to replace them?
Coach B: Why, certainly good sir. It would be my honour.
Nope, there will always be wrangling and fighting and coaches trying to hang on to their best players. It was ever thus. But it will essentially work as it always has - the best players will move up as demand requires. It hasn't always happened as quickly as it should have, but it happens.
Alright, for anyone still listening, that is the end of my rant. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who feels differently and can assure you I will start writing about rugby again soon.
In the meantime, please let us (and the section) know how you feel about these changes by voting in the poll below...
Harps
The Blog is back for its second season of crisp analysis and aimless banter. There are rumours that we will shortly be taking this content to a newly revamped Rugby Section website masterminded by Brother Paul McGee, who has recently taken a vow of silence, but for the time being, we are live again at http://www.hkfcrugbysection.blogspot.com/.
I am quite happy to take the Blog's content into an official HKFC portal. After all, this Blog has been officially sanctioned from its beginning. And I love the idea that PT is pushing of an integrated web platform for the section: one that will allow information, team lists, results and so on to be easily distributed to the whole section and that will enable the build-up of an invaluable archive of data. But whether we are here or on a new uber-website, the Blog will never become a tame noticeboard for the section's leadership, even though it exists to support, celebrate and inform the HKFC rugby section. I may be a bit of a weapon, but I will never be a tool...
Because it would be a sad day if 'we' at the Blog felt uncomfortable to be critics when criticism is a fair response, either in assessing performances on the pitch, or decisions made in the Club's boardroom, more normally known as the Sportsman's.
Indeed, I would like to start this season's Blog on the offensive. It is my understanding that the noble and ancient team names within the section will be abandoned in favour of depressingly bland team numbers. That is to say: firsts, seconds, thirds and so on. For those new to the club, and for clarity, the six club men's teams, in order, are: Club, Dragons, Scorpions, Select, Sequins and Bulls. The ladies' team is called Ice (and I confess I am not sure what happens to that under the new numbers system).
The reasoning behind abolishing the team names (as if it were possible) is that having team names and strong identities for each team discourages movement of players between the teams and restricts players' and coaches' thinking to their own little world. In short, so the argument goes, the team names are divisive, create silo mentalities and hold back the section as a whole.
It's easy to follow the logic of the argument, but there are two powerful reasons why it is a misguided initiative and destined to immediate failure.
Firstly, consider the motivations of a rugby player taking the field. He or she plays for his or her own pride in what they do; they may play for a coach sometimes; but I believe that, for the largest part, they will play for their team. They will play for the people around them and for the identity of the team and, without wishing to become too prosaic, its spirit. The spirit is created by the people that get together with our player every week to train and play rugby. But the spirit of the past players, in the way that it influences the players still there who remember them and what has gone before, means that every rugby team is, if you like, a distinct fabric into which a large number of personalities, past and present, are woven.
It sounds rather obvious, but the idea of the team is the essential building block of rugby life -its DNA. And a team is not effective as some kind of loose, technical grouping that serves an abstract greater good. When people go out to play, they cannot be expect to think of and play for several hundred other people in the rugby section. They cannot be expected to think of themselves as part of one team of 105 players lining up in seven matches on Saturday. They are part of a squad, a team, that can only give its all in its own game. Ask rugby players to think beyond that, or to play for more than that, and you are missing the point of the game.
The team name is like a flag or battle standard. It's what the captain shouts to rally the team on the pitch. The aura of the name creates a strangely potent bond between the players that it joins together. If you've ever played the game, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. The Club is full of teams that have attracted incredible loyalty down the years and developed quite distinct cultures of their own. These distinctions aren't big but they are important. It's to do with they way you play (or the way you think you play) and the personalities in your team and the kind of chatter they create.
In HKFC, teams have always defined themselves against the other teams, which isn't surprising. Every team - maybe every group of individuals - naturally likes to differentiate itself and stand out. Remember Bulls' red socks; Select's "Mighty" sobriquet and their bauhinia jackets; Sequins' Corner and their preposterous waistcoats; Dragons' sense of us-against-the-world-when they were the Dvision One whipping boys and no-one wanted to play for them. When I thought I would have to leave Hong Kong a couple of years ago, the-then Scorpions captain wrote me a very kind letter with a Scorps' letterhead and implored me to remember that I would always be a Scorp.
I clearly remember one player declaring to anyone who would care to listen at a Captain's Dinner that he "embodied the spirit of Bulls." I have no idea what he meant (although I bet I would if I were a Bull) but it's hard to imagine anyone saying "I embody the spirit of co-operation across the rugby section" and feeling proud of it. It's a worthy ideal, but it's empty when we consider why we play the game. We all love the rugby section as a whole and we all want the whole Club to do well. It's just that we play for a team, not a section, and that team should have a name, an identity and a spirit.
The second reason follows on from that and is less fundamental, less philosophical and more practical. It won't work. At a very simple level, people will continue to use these team names for ever and aye. I went to university in a city where the biggest, nastiest and best nightclub was still called Sindie's despite the fact that it had been called about three other things in the twenty-odd years since it was last Sindie's. When people like names, they stick.
And it's not going to alter players' willingness or ability to move up the teams. There are plenty of players in the Club and Dragons teams today who started in Scorps, Select and Bulls. Good and committed players will always be ambitious to play for the best team that they can.
Nor, I fear, is such a cosmetic change going to alter coaches' attitudes much. Coaches are naturally dedicated to their own team, and so they should be. I don't think the following conversation will ever happen:
Coach A: Right, I am delighted that four of my best players have been asked to play for the team above me. It's always a great pleasure to support the section as a whole. May I ask you if you will kindly provide me with your four best players to replace them?
Coach B: Why, certainly good sir. It would be my honour.
Nope, there will always be wrangling and fighting and coaches trying to hang on to their best players. It was ever thus. But it will essentially work as it always has - the best players will move up as demand requires. It hasn't always happened as quickly as it should have, but it happens.
Alright, for anyone still listening, that is the end of my rant. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who feels differently and can assure you I will start writing about rugby again soon.
In the meantime, please let us (and the section) know how you feel about these changes by voting in the poll below...
Harps
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