Clever progress in Argentina. A model for others.

I was confused when I read about Argentina centrally contracting players to play in home matches and in the same article reading that they were actually playing in South Africa.

"The UAR made a huge leap this year, to coincide with entry into the Rugby Championship, by centrally contracting 11 home-based players for the first time. They have another 40 amateurs in a High Performance Academy that provides third level scholarship, financial compensation and access to the training facilities across five regional centres of excellence and the national centre in Buenos Aries." http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2012/1124/1224327040824.html

It turns out that these "home" matches are with an Argentinian team playing in the vodafone cup.
"Pampas XV is an Argentine rugby union team, based in South Africa and currently playing in the South African second domestic competition, the Vodacom Cup.[1] The team was established in 2010 and is composed almost entirely by members of the High Performance Plan of the UAR." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pampas_XV

This is wonderful for Argentinian rugby and allows them to gradually go professional while being from a continent still far from being up to providing a good enough level of competition for them. Hopefully Europe will follow suit and bring Spanish or Belgian teams into the Pro D 2 or another equivalent. Well done South Africa for accommodating this and what a great model to follow! It's great to see a rugby nation helping another for the advancement of the sport.

That is a great idea. I'd love to see a Belgium (and maybe German) franchise in the French infrastructure, and maybe Spanish in the RABO, with a Eastern European (Russian/Georgian/Romanian) in the English system.

Just an idea (very) loosely based on Geography, but a great idea for organic growth of Rugby throughout Europe.

All this is part of an IRB development larger project that includes Argentina as the main actor.
Argentina is benefiting from participation in TRC and the participation of "Los Pampas" in South Africa into the Vodacom Cup.
In return, Argentina has made changes to its tournament structure to help other countries in South America.
The Argentine regional championship is divided into three categories by the system of promotion and relegation. From the year 2012, in addition to regional Argentine teams, has included the national teams of Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay and Brazil. Uruguay and Chile are in "The championship" division, while Paraguay and Brazil are on "The rise" division.
In this way we help improve the level of neighboring national teams.
Maybe 6N countries can copy this format to help 2nd tier europe countries.

I love it! South Africa help out Argentina, Argentina help out their neighbours and rugby improves in four countries. I would love to see Europe follow suit.

Thanks for passing on the news Argie fan.

From what I remember France refused to let Italy field teams in either of its pro leagues which is why they joined the rabo. The rabo is the example that we have of countries all helping each other improve. It could of course expand to include national sides of Spain for example. It would be great to see the French and the English open to help others too.

How were South Africa persuaded to include the Argentinian team in its league do you know? Was it a selfless act or was there some other motivation?

Well it has been going for a few years, Last year Las Pampas actually won the trophy, they went through the entire season unbeaten.

Intotouch wrote:I love it! South Africa help out Argentina, Argentina help out their neighbours and rugby improves in four countries. I would love to see Europe follow suit.

Thanks for passing on the news Argie fan.

From what I remember France refused to let Italy field teams in either of its pro leagues which is why they joined the rabo. The rabo is the example that we have of countries all helping each other improve. It could of course expand to include national sides of Spain for example. It would be great to see the French and the English open to help others too.

How were South Africa persuaded to include the Argentinian team in its league do you know? Was it a selfless act or was there some other motivation?

Itnitouch, it is an initiative from SARU that also includes Namibia. We're actually good guys.

That's fantastic Biltong! If only the rest of the rugby world shared the South African's solidarity with it's fellow unions. The sport would be twice the size and in far better health than it is now. May the good karma come back to you three times over.

We need a bit of that.