Coed touch rugby draws players
Print Edition
The Shanghai Touch Rugby League has opened its biggest season yet. More than 150 players are participating in the six-team league that plays every month at Shanghai Rugby Football Club, as teams aim to dethrone the defending champions, the Xuhui Giants.
“Game day is like a big party,” says occasional player Jane Rui. “There’s a nervous but excited atmosphere. Everyone is concentrating on competing, learning and growing when they play but it’s a cooperative atmosphere. I enjoy it.”
The 40-something Shanghai native has been playing touch rugby for more than 18 months and is part of an increasing number of local players.
“It’s great to run on the lawn outdoors and I enjoy the teamwork,” she says. “There’s no discrimination against sex and age on the pitch. It improves your health and if you want, you can make friends from diverse cultures.”
The inclusive spirit of touch rugby is its main draw. Since play is stopped once the player with the ball is touched, it’s a non-contact sport safe for both genders and a mix of ages.
It has been played in Shanghai since the mid-1990s and its growth has been led by the Shanghai Touch Association.
The group founded the Shanghai Touch League and offers pick-up sessions three times a week. Players range from age 12 to over 50 and come from around the world.
For players like Vince Faugeroux, the league is a less-taxing alternative to the physical grind of contact rugby.
“I had many problems with injuries but I didn’t want to give up rugby,” the 33-year-old French marketing manager says. “It’s touch, so it’s pretty hard to get injured. It’s also a dynamic sport and great cardio exercise because you are running back and forth. There are lots of different ages and sometimes old dudes will go and score on you. You don’t see it coming because the guy was very smart and did some moves. Being young and fast doesn’t make you the best player.”
Since it was formalized as a sport in 1968, touch rugby has become popular in schools across Australia and New Zealand as a way to teach rugby skills to children. While contact rugby is famously rough, touch rugby emphasizes the sport’s more graceful elements like passing while retaining the game speed.
Head coach Laurent Villemeur, who is also event project leader, has been instrumental in introducing the sport in several schools across Shanghai. A professional rugby and touch coach, the 37-year-old Parisian organized the ongoing Nanjing-Shanghai Touch Series (NSTS) between Junior Under-14 and Under-12 school teams across both cities.
“We tried to get touch into schools because it’s a non-contact sport,” he explains. “It’s very social and mixed so you can have boys and girls playing. The idea was to propose a competition between schools because kids love competition and games.”
The number of participating schools is growing, with Xuhui No. 1 Primary School joining Hangzhou Jiangnan Model School and Nanjing Mingfa School as local public schools in the Under-12 category.
As a non-contact sport, it’s one of the rare, naturally coed youth sports.
“Based on my experience, the first step is to create joy on the pitch,” Villemeur says. “We introduce a lot of tools like bean poles to make it enjoyable for the kids. Once they are hooked, it’s easier to make them practice more intense and focused exercises.”
The growing number of public school teams reflects a larger interest in the sport as a potential feeder system into rugby. With Rugby Sevens set to debut as an Olympic medal sport in 2016, Shanghai Touch President Peter Chiang predicts further interest from local government officials in the sport’s development.
“When kids are too young to play rugby, they often play touch,” he explains. “It helps them develop passing and handling. Often they go into contact rugby, but when they become older guys like us where they can’t get injured anymore, they get back into touch.”
The next month is shaping up to be a busy one for the Shanghai Touch Association. The final round and league playoffs are set for November 23 and the Shanghai International Touch Tournament is around the corner. While there are a number of popular touch tournaments across Asia, including one on the beaches by Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, Shanghai is home to Asia’s largest tournament.
Forty-seven teams will play 121 games this Saturday with teams coming from Hong Kong, Chinese mainland, as well as Japan and Malaysia. Hundreds of spectators attended last year’s events and Faugeroux is amazed by the tournament’s growth.
“I’ve lived in Shanghai for over 10 years and when SITT started it was very small and no one would talk about it,” he says. “Last year there were teams from all over Asia and the organization was very well done. The competition day was nice and the afterparty was awesome.”
Shanghai Touch Association holds pick-up games on Saturdays in Pudong and on Monday nights in Xuhui District. For more information, visit www.shanghaitouch.com.
(Andrew Chin is a Shanghai-based freelancer.)
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