Speeding Up and Shrinking, Rugby Extends Global Reach

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — About 25 miles southeast into the desert here, away from the glittering array of skyscrapers that rise into the clouds, lies a sparkling new stadium that is home to one of global rugby’s biggest events.

It is, in many ways, completely incongruous: The stadium is next to a camel-racing track and in the heart of a country whose national rugby team did not officially exist until 2011. But the stadium’s setting is also perfect.

For years, rugby was primarily the province of a handful of nations in Europe (England, Scotland, Italy, Ireland, France and Wales) and a few from the Southern Hemisphere (Australia, New Zealand and South Africa). The sport, while undeniably popular, lacked reach.

In recent years, though, rugby has blossomed worldwide, in large part because of the expansion of one particular form of the game. Rugby sevens, a streamlined and faster-paced version of the traditional style known as rugby union, is the form that will be used when rugby makes its Olympic debut at the 2016 Rio Games — a reality that has accelerated a change in rugby’s scope.

Players from Brazil, left, and Fiji last week in Dubai. The addition of rugby sevens as an Olympic sport has driven the sport's growth. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times

The growth has been stark: In 2008, the top 10 countries in terms of rugby participation were the nine listed above, plus Argentina. By 2010, Japan, Sri Lanka and the United States had moved into the top 10, while a number of other countries with minimal rugby histories were posting strong showings at international events on both the men’s and women’s sides.

“I was a basketball player — I played down in the post,” Andrew Amonde, captain of the Kenyan team, said in an interview. “I did not start playing rugby until about seven years ago. But since then, it has become the No. 2 sport in Kenya, behind football. Now we play in front of big crowds, in the big stadiums. Everyone in Kenya knows what the sevens team is doing.”

The attraction for players and fans in countries like Kenya, Portugal, China and the United States is the simplicity of rugby sevens. Traditional rugby uses 15 players per side, and its pace can grind, as games stop frequently for organized plays like lineouts, in which a player on the sideline tosses the ball between two lines of opposing players, or scrums, in which players from both teams push against each other in a large mass while the ball is rolled underneath to resume play.

In rugby sevens, rhythm, movement and speed are the dominant characteristics, and it can feel as if there are acres of open field, as each team has only seven players. Instead of standard rugby’s 90-minute games, rugby sevens is played in two seven-minute halves, making for a breakneck pace that generally features constant one-on-one battles in which players shimmy and juke as they sprint for the goal line.

“It’s a game of evasion,” said Zack Test, a former walk-on for the University of Oregon football team who has become one of the leading scoring threats for the United States team. “Imagine if they took away the offensive and defensive lines in football. The speed you would have left is what rugby sevens is all about.”

Fans in Dubai last week. Rugby sevens uses fewer players and shorter games, with fewer interruptions for plays like scrums. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Rugby sevens is not a new game; its roots can be traced to the late 1800s. But for most of its history, the game was seen as more a social form of rugby, something teams might use at end-of-season training sessions or as a light and lively tournament game.

The game’s popularity began to grow in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when international rugby’s governing body, now known as World Rugby, began a global series of events. The biggest surge came in 2009, when the International Olympic Committee voted to add rugby for the 2016 and 2020 Summer Games.

Suddenly, the spotlight on the game grew brighter, and interest rose quickly in events like the one in Dubai last week, which was part of a multifaceted Olympic qualifying process. Some countries, including Russia and China, quickly made rugby part of the physical education curriculum in schools in an attempt to fast-track the sport’s development.

“I played rugby before, but there were not very many of us,” said Sun Tingting, the captain of the Chinese women’s team. “The possibility of the Olympics changed everything. It would be the honor of our lives to be in the Olympics, and we had not imagined it was possible before.”

That carrot looms everywhere. Sonny Bill Williams, one of New Zealand’s most prominent players, is one of several stars expected to make a switch to rugby sevens in preparation for the Olympics. Canadian sports officials are investing more than $1 million a year in rugby development, and the United States has its rugby sevens players working full time at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif.

The Sevens Stadium in Dubai. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Pedro Netto, the coach of Portugal’s team, which has more modest Olympic aspirations, said he hoped to bring his team of amateur players together much more often in the approach to the Games, and he said his country’s Olympic committee, which generally has few resources, had given him a modest amount of money to help.

“We are using it to go to the players’ bosses and ask them to let the players out for longer training camps and tournaments,” Netto said. “It is not perfect, but rugby sevens is a game where anyone can win. Our team is proof of that.”

Mark Egan, the head of competitions and performance for World Rugby, said there had never been any question that rugby sevens was the best form of the game to be featured at the Olympics. While purists might prefer 15-man rugby, staging a 12-team tournament in a sport in which two games a week is considered the maximum was not feasible, he said. In rugby sevens, teams can play three games a day.

Rugby sevens also bridges genders better, Egan said, making it particularly appealing for the Olympics. Egan estimated that 160 of the 204 countries with Olympic committees also had rugby federations, with nations like Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador having recently established governing bodies in large part because of the sport’s simplicity.

“We’re not guaranteed a place in the Olympics beyond 2020,” Egan said. “We know that we have to deliver a quality product, and we think rugby sevens offers a real festival feel — an open, accessible, entertaining game for both men and women that is easy to understand but still fun to watch.”

The scene at the Sevens Stadium here last week was emblematic of that sentiment. Opened in 2008, the complex had the capacity to hold about 100,000 fans — most of them expatriates — for the three-day event, which included youth and adult team tournaments alongside the professional men’s and women’s matches. On Friday, many fans arrived in costumes — there was a particularly impressive pack of “Star Wars” storm troopers who kept their masks on despite the beating sun — and the stands filled throughout a day of action that stretched for nearly 12 hours.

As always, there were surprises. Sevens rugby’s greatest trait may be its “volatility,” according to Mike Friday, the United States men’s coach, and results can be difficult to predict. A fledgling Brazil team took France to the limit, and Canada upset Wales; the Russian women very nearly knocked off New Zealand and England, and Scotland stunned Samoa, one of the sport’s powerhouses despite its tiny population. In past years, Kenya has beaten New Zealand and Australia in rugby sevens, though this year South Africa’s men and New Zealand’s women took home trophies.

“What sevens does is allow any country to think it has a real, live chance,” said Friday, who has also coached in England and Kenya. “In rugby, there are plenty of games where you’d bet your mortgage on the result. In sevens, you’d be better to hold on to your money.”

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