An hour and a half before the game that put the Spanish rugby team in the 2023 World Cup began, the players arrived on the field together and on foot. They hardly gave respite to his concentrated gesture to bump fists with Alberto José Sols, Pinino, 69 years old. Former CEU San Pablo player, former coach and former referee. He caught “the rugby bug” in 1974 and hasn’t let go. A while later, Pablo and Adrian, Rugby Rioja players, sat in the stands with excited faces; They had come with another twenty people from Logroo. Red shirt and optimism on his face.
At the end of the crash the Lions exchanged cheers with the public, especially with the small players who have been made the most important gift of the last 24 years. The arrival at a World Cup should translate into an increase in children who take part in this sport. affirms it Toni Gimeno, coach since 1977 and sports director of CAU Valenciaa club with one of the most prolific academies.
“If it is managed as it should, it is a starting point,” says Gimeno. He maintains that when children try it, they feel an “immediate attraction” to rugby. He defines the role of coaches as “developers of the game, we generate passion and then each player lays the groundwork to be the best player he can be.”
Spanish rugby grew from 25,892 federated practitioners in 2014 to 37,849 in 2019. In that period, the female chips doubled, going from 2,573 to widely exceeding 5,000. As in other sports, that expansion was interrupted by the pandemic and now it’s time to recover that lost muscle.
“A coach has to try to smell which player really wants to spend time with him because few are willing to make the effort. The level of physical contact is very high and, if you are not very well prepared, it is very difficult to survive”. In addition, explains Toni Gimeno, the debutant in the Division of Honor or Division of Honor ‘B’ faces another vital dilemma because professionalism it is still implanting. “For 10 years you can survive in a wonderful stage, but no matter how much you study, you have to dedicate yourself 100% and what will happen to you when you are 35 years old?”
Spanish rugby exports young talent
More than 30 years have fulfilled half of the players who have taken Spain to the World Cup. “The national team is not there to train, here you come to compete”, Santiago Santos usually argues when criticized for the numerical predominance of veterans. There is no room for reproaching him, he needed results and he has obtained them. After the women’s team, with less means and a lot of merit, stayed at the gates of its World Cup, the classification of the Lions for France 2023 it had become a priority for Spanish rugby.
To the vast human group that Santos has managed, we must recognize, in addition to the result, the commitment. Many were called and few were chosen. The coach has managed to assemble a team from members with diverse sporting backgrounds: players from the Spanish league (including foreigners settled here), French professionals with parents or grandparents on the Peninsula, and homegrown players from our country who cross the Pyrenees looking for a future. professional in rugby.
This last profile is becoming more frequent. Boys (and soon girls) with projection come out in adolescence, emigrants from the melon, especially to France. The Spanish quarry exports talent; the negative reading is that our country still does not have structures to retain it. “In about 10 or 15 years we are going to have a starting fifteen basically trained in Spain and with members playing in professional leagues,” Santos estimated. in an interview with EL MUNDO before the qualifying tournament began. On Thursday he pointed out that the relief in some critical positions, such as the media, is assured. “It is a starting point, we have only just begun, it means being in the third world sporting event, it should serve to take off,” he stressed this Sunday after qualifying.
A High Performance Plan
Is it possible to stabilize among the international elite with this model or is Spain condemned to no more than intermittent presence in the World Cups? Is this success a defensive kick or a follow up kick? “99% of rugby is social and is the base, but 1% must be worked on in a more orderly and faster way”. He is defended by Juan Carlos Martín Sánchez, Hansenformer president of the club Silverstorm El Salvador and candidate, two years ago, for the presidency of the Federation in the elections in which Alfonso Feijoo revalidated his mandate.
He hopes that the 2023 World Cup will be “an accelerator, a great excuse to start working with a strategic vision.” He praises and celebrates the sporting success but believes that “it is not a consequence of a good job at the bases, it is a consequence of the fact that the work that has been done outside has been able to take advantage of it, a job of selection has been done, but not of sports management developmental”.
In order to promote precisely this development of young players, the next arrival in Spain, sent by the International Federation, is very likely, as revealed by the magazine ’22’, of the Argentine coach Ral ‘Aspirina’ Prez. Juan Carlos Martn Snchez considers it urgent to “clear the way” towards High Performance. “Talent is born from the clubs, they recruit and promote it, they need support. There has to be supervision, from local clubs and federations, work with technification centers so that from a certain age they start working in academies, by age, with the national top 200”. He also cites the convenience “of an emerging team playing strong competition.”
On this point the agreement is almost general. In that conversation with EL MUNDO, coach Santos explained that the ideal would be “to have the maximum possible number of players with a contract with the Federation, in a professional environment and competing.” It is the model of the Argentine Jaguares, which would translate into putting together a squad in the United Rugby Championship, an annual competition that brings together the regions of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and which has been joined by teams from Italy and South Africa. Santos calculated that the estimated cost of a stable team there, preferably young, would be about 5 million a year. An amount greater than the entire Federation budget. Rugby and money. A binomial that until 1995 was taboo, that today walks together in a large part of the planet.
PUSH IN THE SAME DIRECTION
Due to his experience, Juan Carlos Martn Snchez emphasizes the rarefied relationship in the elite of Spanish rugby. “The Federation has to go hand in hand and not at the expense of the clubs.” Cite the example of the calendar. Almost every season there is some date on which a match of the XV del Len with the League. With the French clubs it is negotiated, with the Spanish -he says- it is hardly counted. The most professional teams, which pay the contracts of the players in our League, cannot count those games with them. As these clubs also need results, it is another incentive to sign foreigners, an established trend. And another door that reduces space to young people.
“The clubs have to know what to expect, it was done with the selections of seven and it was done well”, he explains, alluding to the fact that in this Olympic modality the clubs know that they do not have the scholarship holders for the ADO plan. At the moment, there are no means to pay these hypothetical players with main or exclusive dedication to the national team. The other options – fewer elite teams, fewer competitions, or stretching the season – also have drawbacks. And they almost always lead to the same place: money..
VISIBILITY AND BUSINESS
“Qualifying for the World Cup is a starting point at a business level. For example, for Generali, the main sponsor of the national team, you reinforce your ties to a team that has been fighting for years and has achieved it”. are words of Mirella Ruiz, co-founder of Kiwi House. His company brought the Sevens World Series to Spain for the first time and organizes next May 21 at the Wanda stadium -32,000 tickets already sold- the meeting between the Spanish team and the All Blacks Classics.
For her the success of the Lions translates into visibility and “not only on television”. He explains that to reach those born in the 90s and 2000s “you have to have a good product, a beastly production, if you have premium content and promote it to have an audience, the brands will want to be there.”
His vision of rugby is not limited to eighty minutes of play. “The game is the moment where sport meets brand. It’s great, but people are going to have fun. If you give it an entertainment experience, people go.”
Mirella Ruiz maintains that the great potential of oval sport lies in the fact that it has a story to tell. “For me respect is fundamental, we have forgotten what it is. Loyalty, teamwork and respect for the figure of the referee”. He points out at the end that the victory against Portugal should be, with great sadness for all, the farewell of the selection of the Complutense National Stadium. “If we are approached by brands, you have to have a space for sponsors, an aspiration to go for more.”
“It’s a success for all of Spanish rugby,” said coach Santos after qualifying for the 2023 World Cup. Precisely on the pitch of the ‘Central’ they ran in frenzy with their balls, an hour and a half after the historic game of their idols, players even younger than Pablo and Adrian. If this beloved field is beginning to get old and small, perhaps it is because Spanish rugby, without losing the tradition of Alberto José fine-grainedis growing like them.
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