Inside Division I: Riverside
Friday April 16 2004
Brian Lowe examines the California Division One squad Riverside
By Brian Lowe
Ask people where the Inland Empire is and chances are you’ll hear “somewhere near Mongolia?” Ask them where Riverside is and you’re likely to get a look of puzzlement, but ask rugby followers if they’ve heard of the Riverside RFC and you should get a response in the affirmative, at least from most people.
If you haven’t heard of Riverside, and what the club has achieved lately, you’ve probably been on another planet, but we’re about to change all that as we go Inside Division I.
This is a club that went 0 for in the Southern California League in 2002, in fact it was such a disappointing season that the club dropped down to Division II in 2003. Of course, if you followed the national championships last year, you’ll know that Riverside went on to win it all to claim its first national title. And because of that success, the club was promoted to the Southern Cal First Division this year.
And guess what? Not only did the Killer Bees win the SoCal championship, they also ran the table to finish with a very credible 12-0 record. So how did it happen, how did this remarkable turnaround in form occur? According to club president Danny Bragg, it was a combination of determination to succeed and an injection of new players.
“It took last year for us all to start playing together,” he says, “last year was the beginning of what we have now. We’re a family of nations, we all learned to play together and communicate and now we’re playing as a team.”
A family of nations is a very apt way of describing the Riverside club these days, as there are players from Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Nigeria and Canada, to add to the locals who were already there, and what attracted them all to the club was its success in 2003.
“Everyone likes being part of a winning organization,” adds Bragg. “We’ve got our core guys who’ve stayed and stayed and stayed, and now we’ve got these guys and they’re becoming core guys.”
Apart from the winning formula on the field, Riverside has also landed on a successful infrastructure off the field. The executive committee has remained pretty much the same for the past few seasons, but this year past president Brooks Speake took on the role of general manager and he has been responsible, to a large extent, for adding new talent to the roster.
The club also added a wealth of experience when former New Zealand Maori Arthur Jennings, or AJ as he’s more commonly known around the traps, came on board as head coach. Romance is what brought Jennings Stateside, as his long-time sweetheart, now his wife, hailed from Riverside, and as Bragg puts it, Jennings has made a ton of difference.
“AJ has been a very big factor in getting the community involved. He relit the fire in the community for us, just by talking to the city, and I think that has helped a lot.”
So, having won everything in SoCal this season, the Killer Bees go into the Competitive Region I playoffs as the number one seed from Southern California and as you would expect, they have their eye on the Division I national title. Does Bragg believe his team can win the whole enchilada? Are you kidding me?
“We were there last year and we got to see some of our competition in the First Division, whether it be the Irish Wolfhounds or Charlotte. I’m from Texas and I know as you get further east, boys get bigger, so we know we’re going to have some really big packs to deal with.
“We hear all about Boston Irish having the best front row in the world, so we know our work is going to be in the forwards and we’re going to work there really hard.”
One of the club’s stalwarts is its captain and eightman Ashley Pengelly, who’s also the main goal kicker. Pengelly, originally from Regina in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, has seen the highs and lows in his six years at Riverside, but he says this year’s team is head and shoulders above the rest.
And given that the club is such a family of nations, one of his tougher assignments is to marshal the troops week in and week out.
“Fortunately, on the field I get a lot of respect from the guys, but we wouldn’t have had the success we’ve had without senior players like Nelo (Lui). He makes a lot of the calls, and he fits that role very well, and I use the authority I’ve been given as captain to be the cool head when guys get fired up. He’s got the experience of playing internationally for the USA in sevens and it shows.”
According to the skip, the hard grind of 2002, combined with the successful run in Second Division in 2003, set up what has to date been an unblemished performance in 2004.
“Last year was a tremendous highlight for us, especially based on the previous year when we got throttled every game in First Division, but that’s part of it. I’ve always believed that in order to win well, you’ve got to be able to lose well, and we’ve been on both sides of the coin.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but whichever teams face Riverside in this year’s run to the USA Rugby national clubs championship had better be ready to bring it on because these guys are genuine contenders.
And oh, by the way, the Inland Empire is about 50-miles east of downtown Los Angeles.