West Coast Cup Details, Elite Cup Not Dead

We know most of you have been clamoring for more detail about the West Coast Cup. Well, we got a hold of James Walker to flesh through some of the questions surrounding the competition. We also caught up with U.S.A. Rugby Club Director Jim Snyder to get more info on the Elite Cup, which by all indications is happening.

West Coast Cup

In speaking with Walker he stressed that everything was 95% safe to go forward and barring something drastic they overlooked. At this point no matter whether U.S.A. Rugby sanctions the competition or not all the teams are committed to moving forward (more on this from Snyder later). All the West Coast Cup teams have committed to playing DI alongside the WCC.

Take the jump to read more.

The working name for the competition is the West Coast Cup and it could remain that way or it could change, especially if a title sponsor comes along. The competition has a few sponsors at the moment and is working for more. (Note: We know people would like to know all the details about the competition but at this point even the folks behind the West Coast Cup don't have everything put together. The competition will happen but things take time. If you were them would you want information presented before it's finalized? Both the WCC and the Elite Cup have been gracious in handing out information.)

The committed teams at this moment are Seattle-OPSB, Denver Barbarians, Glendale Raptors, SFGG, OMBAC, Belmont Shore, and Olympic Club. As Alex Goff noted over at Rugbymag Santa Monica is still a possibility. In terms of the folks behind the scenes officials from Belmont Shore, San Francisco Golden Gate, and OMBAC have been some of the big drivers. That said, as you can imagine there have been a lot of people helping out behind the scenes. Several of the folks working behind the scenes were involved in the old Super League.

The competition is set to begin in January and run through the end of April. Each team will play a home and away with the other teams in the competition. Right now that means 12 matches for each team and if Santa Monica joins it will be pushed up to 14. The Cup will only have one playoff match to decide a winner. It's still to be determined if that match will take place at the home of a higher seed or at  a pre-determined location. That decision could rest on what sponsorships come aboard. (Most of this so far has been reported by Alex).

Another aspect of the competition will be double-headers. Much like what the Elite Cup did this last year in New York and Denver the WCC plans on holding double-headers to make matches more of an event and to possibly make the matches more profitable. So you could see Denver host SFGG and Glendale host OMBAC in a double-header at Infinity Park. The same could be done for the teams in the Bay Area or Southern California.

Every match will be webstreamed and available later on-demand.

Although the competition begins in January, Denver and Glendale have assured that they can play despite any possible snow. The pitch at Infinity Park doesn't freeze so even if it's cold they will play. Walker noted that the conditions will be like the South Island of New Zealand during their season. Travel may be another issue and it is a risk but we guess the schedule will probably have Glendale and Denver on the road a lot at first.

One of the big reasons for the creation of the WCC was scheduling. Teams didn't want to lose their best players to national team duty during the week of a playoff match. The WCC will finish before the start of the international window. When asked about the inevitable conflict with the U.S.-Uruguay series Walker said that is was something out of their control but was also an isolated incident.

According to Walker each club will be in charge of recruiting their own players. That means a team like OMBAC could use players from the 7's residency program while other teams could borrow players from another DI team. However, as Jim Snyder pointed out, U.S.A. Rugby is absolutely against borrowing players and it would likely result in not sanctioning the competition.

From a financial perspective the WCC has a five and a ten year plan. As Walker pointed out, the idea behind the competition is to give teams more games for the same or less money than they were spending before. Even if the league doesn't pull in any money it would be the same for most teams. The goal is to make the league and asset that can then be used to benefit the clubs. The competition does have minimum requirements but paid seating isn't one of them. It's just not realistic for all clubs at this point.

Elite Cup

Jim Snyder was also nice enough to answer our questions. In regards to the WCC he noted that U.S.A. Rugby was supportive of any club's attempt to get better games. If the WCC works for those teams out west then it has the support of U.S.A. Rugby. The only way it wouldn't is if WCC teams recruited active DI players from other teams. The WCC may go by different eligibility rules so that could be a problem. For example, if a player is registered to the Sacramento Lions U.S.A. Rugby would have a problem if he played for Olympic Club in the WCC during the same season. Snyder also noted that the WCC wasn't much different from what the Super League and the Elite Cup have been trying to accomplish. All the competitions can co-exist and teams can participate in both.

We should note that both Snyder and Walker were very open to working with one another. They may not agree on everything but in no way is their animosity.

Contrary to the rumors out there the Elite Cup is not dead but will come back with even more matches next year. All eight teams from last year have verbally committed to playing. The Elite Cup committee has come out with a few recommendations that if approved should help all teams involved. Under the new format each team would play the other seven teams in the competition once, either home or away in a single table format. If teams played under U.S.A. Rugby eligibility rules a match between two WCC teams that were involved in the Elite Cup (i.e. Seattle-OPSB, Glendale, Denver, or SFGG) then that match could count double as both a WCC match and an Elite Cup match (and in theory a DI match). Essentially U.S.A. Rugby would only recognize the Elite Cup or DI match and leave the WCC to do their own thing.

For the upcoming Elite Cup season teams will not be required to participate in DI (although the WCC agreed that all of their teams would play DI so at least the western teams will be playing DI). The folks behind the Elite Cup have also made headway in getting more money to offset the costs of the competition.

There is a scenario where a team that is in both the WCC and the Elite Cup could have a match on the same day. If the team doesn't have enough players for both matches in their DI/Elite Cup pool it's in theory possible for them to use DIII players. DIII players can play in so many DI matches before losing their DIII eligibility. So if SFGG wanted to use their DIII players in one Elite Cup match it's possible. They couldn't use them for more than a couple of matches.

So that's pretty much it. There are still a lot of details to be worked out for both competitions (as Walker and Snyder repeatedly told us) but these are the plans for the moment. What do you think?