Hope that rugby can become top-five sport in the country: RI president Bose

New Indian Express

8 hours ago

On building an audience through RPL
So we have learnt from the experiences of other leagues. Number one, I don't believe individual sports make for successful leagues. Because (in team sports) there is a sense of loyalty and a sense of getting behind a team's culture. There is a kind of fandom that individual (sport) does not (possess). So in that respect, it ticks that box. The second box it has to tick is it the best thing you are watching on television in that sport at that time? We have the best players in the world. Third and equally important thing is that your sport has to have tremendous excitement every 30 seconds. You cannot be waiting for 90 minutes for a goalless draw. You are going to have to do it. Team sport, best in the world and incredibly exciting every 30 seconds on television.
On challenges the sport faces
Money. Basically I have 1600 players including those from the age-groups and the seniors, both men and women. What if I give them all a lakh just for making their state team? (Rs) 16 crores? They wouldn't leave. As soon as you are getting into the state team, you would not leave. You wouldn't drop out at the district level. The second example is, if you have money, you build infrastructure. But how you use that money to build, what you use it on — you have to have a vision, and intellect to execute it. Only then does it make sense. If you look very closely at the way Indian rugby has been playing itself out in the last 3-4 years, you will begin to see this pattern. You start with 20 players and devote all the resources you can at the high performance level. And then you start to take the lessons from this and take down the system. And then you start to create this culture here very slowly and you build from here. And meanwhile, this is developing and taking on new shapes because you were doing something wrong. Nutrition was important, you ignored it. Psychology was important, you forgot about it. Now you are building those systems and you keep trickling that down. So, it's a laborious process which is why 50 years goes nowhere. So a league like the RPL is like a vitamin injection which accelerates the process and reduces the time frames from 50 to 75 years hopefully to 25 to 30 years.