Dismissive attitudes on costs have been a problem in USA Rugby for decades.

Poor planning that means goalpost pads have to be overnighted across the country (you try that and find out how much it costs), sending a large percentage of the national office to the Rugby World Cup or other events where they don’t actually do much, and a pervasive attitude that as long as you’re getting several million dollars of membership money, a few hundred dollars here and a few hundred dollars there won’t add up—it does.

And this also spills out into dismissive attitudes toward the membership in other ways ... such as when someone hosts a USA Rugby tournament, they aren't given a chance to make the event their own, or to make money. USA Rugby is big on making money and spending money for itself, but doesn't appear to care about members.

 

 

 

 

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Another minute on the hosting idea. Why do I care and what about Eagles games? Hey ... If a host venue knows it's got am Eagles game every year for 4 years won't they invest more into being successful?

A post shared by Alex Goff (@goffrugbyreport) on Jan 31, 2020 at 4:05pm PST

Solution

Leadership. The head of USA Rugby needs to understand the organization, who does what, and needs to instill a culture of safeguarding the dollars AND a culture that the members are the employers.

In 2006, when USA Rugby had a somewhat similar crisis, and wrote this on GoffonRugby.com:

“The first job of anyone who wants to lead USA Rugby is to meet with all the employees, full-time and part-time, and ask them to write down their job description. Tell me what you do every day. Next, tell me what you think your day-to-day and long-term tasks should be. Not what they are, but what they should be. Help me formulate measurements for success."

Much of this still holds. It’s about leadership, protecting the member’s dollar, and putting the member in a position to succeed.