The following article appeared in the New York Times. An interesting read.
If you stopped average Russians on the street and asked them about the country’s rugby union team, the chances are you would be met with blank stares.
But those involved in the game in Russia are celebrating the fact that the Bears have qualified for their first Rugby World Cup after finishing second in the European Nations Cup last year.
Russia will attend rugby’s showpiece event in New Zealand, which begins in September. Beating the most powerful of its Pool C opponents — Australia, Ireland and Italy — may be the stuff of dreams. But the man who has been integral to their success so far, Steve Diamond, believes that if the team plays to its potential, it could beat the fifth member of the pool: the United States.
“It’s all about performance,” said Diamond, an Englishman who since 2008 has been Russia’s director of elite rugby and forwards coach. “No country’s come to a World Cup and won a game first time up, and we’ve got Australia, Ireland, Italy and U.S.A.
“One of our goals is to score a try in every game. To some people, it seems a bit simple, but if we can do that — we’re obviously not going to pump America up and say we’re going to beat them, but they are our target.
“If we’re as fit as them and we play well on the day and they don’t have a great day, then I think we can pull off a result, which would be massive.”
Rugby may not register in the daily lives of many Russians, but their qualification for the World Cup has piqued the interest of rugby fans in general, said the Bears’ backs and skills coach, Henry Paul, a former New Zealand rugby league and England rugby union international.
“Being a Kiwi and playing in England for a long time, a lot of people ask and want to know how Russia are going,” Paul said.
“They are really, really excited about Russia because it’s such a closed book, and the country was so closed off.”
“People are very interested in how they play, the league competition, who is the best player.”
Ranked 18th on the International Rugby Board rankings, Russia is classified as a Tier 2 performance nation by the world game’s governing body.
But it has ambitions to change that and to be more competitive when taking on higher-ranked Tier 2 nations like the United States, Georgia and Japan, which thrashed Russia 75-3 in a match last November.
It helps that the players involved in the country’s domestic competition are all full-time paid professionals, even though the league itself is of a lower standard than the high-profile competitions in Europe, like the Aviva Premiership in England or the Top 14 in France.
“To be fair, it’s a bit like the amateur days before it went professional 15 years ago,” Diamond said of the standard of rugby.
The game in Russia also has the backing of a wealthy benefactor, Vyacheslav Kopiev, who is also the president of the Rugby Union of Russia.
Kopiev has paid for a two-week training camp the national team is holding in New Zealand. Kopiev also owns a television network in Russia, which ensures that rugby gets aired during prime time.
“We’ve got a conscientious owner and president who is a successful businessman,” Diamond said. “He doesn’t throw his money about, but we go to him with a proposition for how we are going to run the budget for the next 12 months and he’ll say no to some things but will generally agree with what we suggest.”
But as with any developing sport, funding from the game’s governing body is crucial.
“Our funding from the I.R.B. is helpful. But we’re a performance nation and we want to become a high-performance nation,” Diamond said. If teams are of a higher standard, they receive more money from the I.R.B.
“We get maybe £500,000 off the I.R.B. now, but if we become a high-performance nation, like America or Canada or Japan, we get maybe £2 million, which is a huge amount of money for a team at this standard.”
Up to now, Diamond and a fitness trainer, Nigel Ashley-Jones, an Australian, have worked hands-on with the Russian squad for only about 20 weeks a year — usually a week or so before a test, during competitions or during a training camp like the one taking place in New Zealand.
The rest of the time, the players are expected to work on programs that have been laid out for them under the guidance of Russia’s head coach, Nikolay Nerush, and the rest of the Russian management team.
Diamond will scale back his involvement with the team after next month, when he starts a new job as executive director of sports with the English rugby union club Sale Sharks. But he will still play some part in the Bears’ upcoming European Nations Cup and Churchill Cup fixtures and at the World Cup.
Paul, who joined the group in June, plans to immerse himself further in the country’s rugby landscape, working with coaches and players after spending just a total of seven weeks with the Russian team in six months and another couple of weeks working with clubs in Moscow and Siberia.
“Definitely it’s not enough time, but you’ve just got to make the most of it,” Paul said.
“They do need people on the ground over there, not just coming once every couple of months and doing a trip,” Paul said.
“Working with the teams in the premiership is great, but they have their own club codes and their own management, so it’s quite hard to rock in there and do a session without maybe upsetting what they are used to doing and what they have been coached to do,” he said. “With the under-20s, it’s brilliant, because you’ve got a clean slate.”
Breaking down barriers and getting the players to express themselves have been other hurdles the trio has had to overcome.
It is not surprising that the players have been reticent given the history and culture of Russia and, before that, the Soviet Union.
“They had to be very careful about what they said because you didn’t know who is listening,” said Paul, who is slowly mastering the Russian language.
“It is a different culture, and sometimes it can be hard work because of the language barrier and the fact they are very stand-offish as people. You’ve got to break down the barriers quite quickly and show that you’re trustworthy.”
“Steve has been with the team two years, and he’s still learning about some of their backgrounds and personal stories amongst the team,” Paul said. “Hopefully, leading up to the World Cup, we can get some of the boys to come out of their shell a bit.”
