Leinster ref takes charge of “World Trophy” clash

Hearing about a world rugby trophy being played for in the US may turn your minds to other instances where American athletes compete for world championships in sports that aren’t played worldwide such as baseball. However, in this case there’s some history and an international flavour to the competition, if not quite what you’d expect. The first intercollegiate match for the World Trophy was in 1921, when University of British Columbia beat Stanford 8-0 in a game sponsored by Vancouver’s “World” newspaper. Since then, the trophy has become a competition between University of California (Berkeley) and University of British Columbia and is played on a home and away basis annually. See http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/rugby.html for more information.

I arrived in Palo Alto (about 40 miles south of San Francisco) in August 2007 and made the acquaintance of the local referees’ association with the Northern Californian RFU, charmingly called the Pelicans (http://www.pelicanrefs.com/index2.htm). I was made very welcome and invited to referee in games on pitches as diverse as the perfect Stanford University stadium and an all-weather field marked for soccer (complete with soccer goals). It’s true that rugby is not as developed nor as intense here as it is in Ireland but the local “Super League” team, San Francisco Golden Gate, play a pretty good style of rugby that would be competitive at AIL2 level. Many of the players are not American, with a fair sprinkling from all the major rugby playing nations and more than a few from Polynesia. In fact, the first game that I had with San Francisco Golden Gate was against Hayward, a team that had only one non-Polynesian on the pitch. These guys are large, they love to make big tackles, and they relish the physical side of the game. Maybe not Shannon v Garryowen, but it is certainly the equivalent of many a Towns Cup match in Leinster.

All of this led to Wednesday, 20 February at the 2,000 seat stadium called Witter Field in the University of California campus in Berkeley. The field occupies a beautiful setting on a forested hill overlooking the city of Berkeley and then across the bay to San Francisco. The crowd was enthusiastic if biased (most were Cal supporters) and Jack Clark, Cal’s famous coach, who is also a huge man with a reputation of being “helpful” to referees, prowled the sideline. The Cal rugby team is the US national champions and have won 23 of the 28 national championships played since USA Rugby started to organize the championships in 1980. Cal is a seriously good university team with a sprinkling of US internationals. They are organized, sharp, and disciplined. Their opponents from UBC take representing Canada very seriously and enjoy a similar reputation for excellence in Canada, so the stage was set for a good encounter. This game was the 87th time that teams had competed for the World Trophy. Cal had won eight of the last 11 years, although UBC won in 2006 and Cal in 2007.

The game was fast and furious with both teams demonstrating levels of fitness and physicality that were on a par with games such as U21 internationals. Cal won 35-17 in the end, but only scored their final (of 4) tries in the 3rd minute of injury time. BC scored three tries but their kicking let them down as they only converted one score and couldn’t take advantage of a number of penalty chances, especially in the first half. Cal’s back play was superior but BC definitely had an edge in the scrum, so the game was balanced throughout. The highlight was probably a sustained period of attack from BC in the second half that resulted in a try after four minutes of continuous play though multiple phases.

In summary, not quite the status or level of the game that Alain Rolland refereed in Paris but an interesting challenge and a great experience of US rugby at its best.