Your Scrumhalf Connection - Women's Rugby Blog

The teams in the West are currently looking over the current league system and if it is beneficial or detrimental to teams & competition in the West. My post earlier this month talked about several topics including the geography of the West and about the costs of playing in the West. These two issues combined are hurting players, coaches and teams beyond measure.

Current talks now between teams are revolving about maybe moving back to the Best of the West Tournament, an East/West or South/North format, or a Tier 1 and Tier 2 situation or maybe a few other ideas.

The pros are that each team has 6 high level games that they are required and "get to" play. We are bolstering the competition in the West and helping ourselves grow as a result.

The cons of this format: Teams have 3 home games and 3 away games in a year. These are required league matches and almost all require a plane ticket. The Colorado teams are the lucky ones here as they have three teams within driving distance of each other. Austin has the worst case scenario here (and not just because I play for them) but because we are geographically the farthest away from the rest of the teams in the league. It is literally impossible for us not to purchase a plane ticket to play a different team in our league. (Buy a plane ticket or miss a day of work bc we have to drive 10 hours or more.)


This is basically a tournament where each team works to beat all the other teams. I believe there is some seeding that happens to predetermine your standings for the tournament (I have only played in one of these tournaments).

This tournament style can have its problems though, as it all depends on your team that one day. In the league format you have several chances to prove yourself, at the Best of the West Tournament you lose, you are out.


This topic has been discussed mostly because it is a similar format to what a lot of men's teams do. Basically you draw a line down the middle or across the horizon and each region plays the teams in its region. However this format greatly benefits Colorado again because they would just have to dominate Black Ice and Boulder...who are currently ranked the lowest in the West League. Either way we try to split up the league it doesn't seem fair and it always benefits one team or another.


This idea came across the email this morning...and has some potential in my mind. Basically we would go off the current rankings so:

Tier 1
1) Glendale
2) Jazz
3) Sabres

Tier 2
4) Austin
5) Black Ice
6) Boulder

Tier 1 would play the teams within and would fight for the right to represent the West (right now we have 2 seeds, but both seeds will be challenged in 2008). Tier 2 would fight amongst itself to be #1, as the #1 in Tier 2 would move up and the #3 in Tier 1 would drop down. Almost identical to the current National All Star Championships that we have every summer.

A few new ideas were introduced as well, could the #1 Tier 2 team challenge a team in Tier 1 for their spot? Also, how would the D2 teams fit into the mix (the West is working on sending a team to the D2 tournametn in 2008)? Could they challenge the lowest ranked team? There were several other ideas, but these two were of greatest concern to me.

If the West was to adopt this new format, does that mean that Austin, Black Ice and Boulder areut of luck from the 2008 Round of 16? Or do the Sabres drop down and Austin moves up? Then the bottom 3 teams have no chance at Round of 16?

Please leave thoughts in the comments, as I believe we are all open to new ideas and thoughts...

So in summary of all these ideas, there are more questions than there are answers. I just know that the current league system is costing teams more money and is stretching our team officers, players and budget. I think that all this talk is good, and I hope we can all come together to agree on a solution that builds the West up and the teams in it.