Around 1996, the chairman of the New Zealand Rugby Union, Rob Fisher, was asked by the People's Liberation Army authorities to provide coaches for their new rugby program. How many coaches did the Chinese have in mind, Fisher said. "Start off with 10,000," was the reply. I asked Fisher how many coaches were provided. "Two," he told me.
Now there are about 6000 rugby players in China. The nation has played Test rugby and is ranked 24th on the World Rugby table. The laws of rugby have been translated into Mandarin. 
There were cultural problems with finding an appropriate phrase for the "dead ball" area. Some of the schoolboy jargon in the laws needed careful translating. Now this slow march has experienced a boost with the announcement that World Rugby has signed a 10-year deal with the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group that will see a massive investment in grassroots rugby, Olympic Sevens aspirations and the top 15s tournaments like Super Rugby. The ambition by Alibaba is to have 1 million rugby players in China in 10 years.
China is a signal that rugby is exploding around the world. Japan's Brave Blossoms created an upset at the 2015 World Cup by defeating the Springboks. This result has transformed interest in rugby in Japan. The new Sunwolves Super Rugby franchise plays out of Tokyo where the final of the next World Cup in 2019 will be. A World Rugby Sevens tournament has just been played in Hong Kong. The winner was Fiji. This weekend the men's circuit plays in Singapore.
The Pearls, the Australian women's sevens side, takes its 12-match, two-title winning streak to Atlanta. The Pearls are Australia's best hope in a team sport for a gold medal at the Rio Olympics. PRO RNL, a professional rugby tournament, has started in the US. European rugby is matching football in popularity in many areas. Argentina has the Jaguares franchise in the Super Rugby tournament to complement the Pumas in The Rugby Championship.
According to World Rugby, the "halo effect" of Olympic inclusion has resulted in 7.2 million players, excluding an additional million boys and girls in Get Into Rugby programs. There is "a truly global celebration of rugby," on and off the field. That is the good news. The bad news is there is a slow implosion of the game in Australia.
In the week of the World Rugby-Alibaba deal, the Australian Rugby Union announced its five-year strategic plan for 2016-2020. There is to be a push into the public school system to bring diversity into the game. The ARU wants an increase in female participation to 15 per cent across XVs, sevens and VIVA7s. There is a goal of an average Australian TV viewership of 100,000 for every Super Rugby match played in Australia and 1 million people watching the Wallabies playing home Tests in The Rugby Championship. The ARU board and administration is to have 30 per cent female participation.
All this has merit but last year club rugby in Australia had a 7.6 per cent fall in playing numbers. The plan has nothing to say about this. Super Rugby, with its new exposure into Asia and South America, has created a dramatic increase in the broadcast deals. A significant amount of this money must be invested in the heartland clubs and schools. Where does ARU chief executive Bill Pulver think the Super Rugby players will come from if the clubs go into a decline? There is more diversity among the players than in the rugby bureaucracy. Where does this diversity come from, if it isn't from the clubs and rugby schools?
There is too much icing and not enough cake in the ARU's strategic plan. It needs to drop its levy on club players. The war against clubs must stop. The ARU needs to bring in the NZRU centralised system for running Super Rugby clubs. And more coaches (but not perhaps a China-sized number) are needed to improve the rugby experience for players and viewers.