Commentary: The West Indies Team: Rugby joins cricket
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| Published on Saturday, December 8, 2007 |
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By Sir Ronald Sanders
“The West Indies team” to most West Indians means the West Indian Cricket team which, until recently, gave the people of the West Indies much cause for both pride and joy as they defeated teams from all over the world.
Now, “the West Indies team” will also refer to rugby.
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Sir Ronald Sanders is a business
executive and former Caribbean
diplomat who publishes widely
on small states in the global
community. Reponses to:
ronaldsanders29@hotmail.com |
A West Indian rugby team has been shaped in recent years from regional competition, and interest is growing in the game which, for many years, had only a small following.
What flows from this is a principle that holds as good for business as it does for countries and for sport: to compete globally, small enterprises need to pool their resources. Enterprises drawn from small pools, however talented or creative they may be, simply can not match the capability of larger groups.
The logic of the “West Indian” cricket team flowed from the reality that not one of the Caribbean territories could by itself produce a team that could compete successfully at an international level. Had this been attempted, the individual team would simply have lacked the capacity to defeat teams from larger countries on any consistent basis.
The great cricketing nations draw their 11-man squad from populations of tens or hundreds of millions. The West Indies picks its team from less than six million. The numbers alone militate against teams from individual Caribbean nations.
The organisers and administrators of rugby in several Caribbean territories have sensibly recognised that teams from their individual countries also could not compete successfully by themselves. Taking a leaf from the book of West Indian cricket, they have formed a West Indian rugby team.
Nine territories are involved so far. They are: the Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Turks and Calicos Islands.
Remarkably, at a time when international sports organizations are resisting composite teams, drawn from several territories in a region, the West Indies Rugby Union has been accepted as a member of the North American & West Indies Rugby Association (NAWIRA) together with Rugby USA and the Rugby Union of Canada. NAWIRA is a Member of the International Rugby Board (IRB) and the Regional governing body of the IRB.
The West Indian rugby team has participated in several international competitions since 2000. In Los Angles in 2005/06 and again in San Diego in 2007, they competed against the top 14 ranked countries in the world.
Insufficient financing limited preparation and pre tournament competition and, therefore, though competitive, the West Indies did not secure wins in these tournaments. In the same years, however, the team competed in Trinidad against such well known touring sides as Border Reivers of Scotland and Atlantis (USA), winning back to back titles.
The West Indies rugby team, therefore, shows potential for going on to greater heights if it can attract the commercial support that West Indian cricket has over the years.
Global interest in the sport has been greatly assisted by the Rugby World Cup tournament held in France earlier this year.
Hundreds of millions of people watched the tournament on television sets across the world. In European capitals, in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and in the Pacific streets were devoid of traffic as fans congregated to watch the games. The semi-finals and finals were particularly gripping, and the final left millions of people in England weeping and millions dancing with joy in South Africa.
The commercial interest in the game, particularly by television stations created more than an interest in the game, it developed a sense of national pride in the teams.
In South Africa, a nation that has only relatively recently emerged from the racial division of Apartheid which plagued it for many decades, the South African team’s ascendancy to the final and its victory over England, created a sense of national unity that was openly displayed by people of all races joyously celebrating together.
The Caribbean has witnessed the same phenomena with cricket.
Above everything else, the West Indian cricket team has been a unifying force for the people of the English-speaking Caribbean (except Puerto Rico). Even in the United States Virgin Islands, now populated with many immigrants from the former and current British territories in the region, the fortunes of the West Indian cricket team have been followed avidly.
Regardless of what territory they are from, people have rejoiced together in the triumphs of the West Indian cricket team, and they endured disappointment and even grief at their losses.
The important point is that the people of individual Caribbean countries, like the administrators of cricket, recognise that smallness is powerlessness, and it is only through pooling of resources that they stand a chance in global competition.
Several businesses in the Caribbean, in acknowledgement of that reality, are either merging with or acquiring other similar companies to gear themselves to vie with external companies, or they are taking advantage of the Caribbean Single Market to expand their operations beyond their national boundaries. They recognise that they have a better chance of survival and of success if they are ‘Caribbean’ wide.
Because of rules that are linked to definitions of what is a country, the countries of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) have not been able to field a single, composite team in many global sports. Hence, even though there are many talented footballers in the Caribbean (and quite a few are now being contracted by British teams), the West Indies has been unable to mount a West Indian football team, or indeed a single team for the Commonwealth or Olympic games.
Cricket, therefore, has been the single unifying force in sport for the West Indian people.
Now, rugby is presenting itself as another string to the West Indian bow. The Caribbean media, the business community and the governments should encourage those who have been proud enough of their joint heritage and wise enough to recognise the advantage of union in launching the West Indies rugby team. | | | | Reads : 293 | | | |
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