BUCS Rugby

University rugby was once considered the game of the elite, but the rise of BUCS rugby has changed the face of the sport. At a time of instability within the professional game, our educational institutions could provide an answer.

Since rugby’s earliest days, universities have been at the heart of the sport, with the likes of Cambridge, Oxford, Trinity College and St Andrews, often cutting a swathe through rivals, not to mention club sides and international teams alike. Love it or loath it, the Varsity Match did once pack out Twickenham, or close-to, as it brought together some of rugby’s greatest names at the home of English rugby to fight for the honour of the two esteemed institutions. British & Irish Lions (Gavin Hastings, Mike Gibson, Gerald Davies among the number) have battled it out in the respective blues of Cambridge (light) and Oxford (dark), as have princes, politicians and big dogs of business the world over. 

Remarkably, the skirmish for England’s No.10 shirt also had a Varsity Match stage with Stuart Barnes (Oxford) facing Rob Andrew (Cambridge). It peaked in 1995, ironically the dawn of professionalism, with a record crowd of 71,000 and was broadcast on the BBC. After that, the undoubted kings (and queens) of university rugby came not from within the gilded gates of Oxbridge, but from those where sport is all – as long as it comes with a qualification at the end of it.

Almost three decades on from that record-breaking match, on a cold November night in the Midlands, there isn’t 71,000 watching Loughborough University play at home – there isn’t even a stand, more of a sloping backdrop and a bit of fencing – and the BBC cameras are conspicuous in their absence, but the rugby has moved on considerably. It is fast, skilful, physical, and there’s plenty of talent on display. This is where the professional game needs to be looking. 

Tonight, perennial giants Loughborough – a constant presence at university rugby’s top table for decades now, only recently having their status challenged consistently by the likes of Hartpury – are playing fellow top-two side [at the time of writing] Cardiff, a team that wasn’t even close to being the best student side in Cardiff, let alone Britain, until recent times. 

Local rivals Cardiff Met are a renowned rugby-playing institution having produced upwards of fifty international players through the ages, from more modern-day players such as Alex Dombrandt, right back to Gareth Edwards.

They are the teams to beat when this game was played, part of a clutch of sides vying to win the BUCS [British Universities & College Sport] Super Rugby league, or the BSR, which has come to represent the very best of university rugby. 

Ten teams make up the division which sits at the top of a five-tier league pyramid inhabited by 280 sides and 46 leagues. The women’s competition consists of twenty leagues, involving 121 teams.

Despite having topped the league already this season, Cardiff are the clear underdogs, having only been promoted in 2018, ironically taking the place of their local rivals Swansea, who’d finished bottom of the top division, in a play-off. With eighth and ninth-placed finishes to show for their troubles, this season is the one they’re hoping to make their mark.

Their director of rugby, Alan Flowers, has led the programme for the last five years and been instrumental in their journey. “It’s very early days, but we’ve had a good start,” Alan admits, a wry smile forming on his face. “It’s great to see how things are developing off the field, and the benefit of that on the pitch.”

The university’s playing fields are being redeveloped, to become part of Cardiff City’s junior football academy, with elite-level performance facilities. “We’re sharing that,” Alan continues, “it’s going to be a multi-usage, state-of-the-art facility. As our facilities have grown internally, we have got better coaches and managers on board and developed relationships with academies.”

Building strong links with both Cardiff Rugby and Bristol Bears has helped Alan to draw in more support for the university in recent years. And, although the professional rugby future of his players is important to Alan, there is also clearly an emphasis on the dual pathways that Cardiff aim to provide, and seeing players graduate from their degree courses is one of the best parts of his job. “The fact that we’ve maintained that balance,” he continues, “and they can walk away with the best degree they could possibly get, that’s one of my biggest highlights.” 

Cardiff are hoping to add their names to a long list of rugby universities that are renowned for the sport, the likes of Hartpury and Exeter having put their hands up as some of the best in recent years. Long before the cornerstones of Cardiff University had even been set, rugby was only initially played by a select few student sides. Trinity College of Dublin University, founded in 1854, were one of the first rugby universities and are even credited as being one of the oldest clubs to play football of any code.

In the 1860s, St Andrews and Edinburgh University played one another for the first time at Murrayfield, a fixture that would become the longest recurring varsity match in history. The Oxford and Cambridge Varsity Match didn’t start until 1872, but it soon earned its reputation, with some of the earliest fixtures attracting crowds in their thousands. 

In addition, in 1889, both Oxbridge sides recorded famous wins against the All Blacks, only adding to the hyperbole around them.

After the First World War, rugby began to spread. Eleven universities including Cardiff, Durham, Leeds, and Nottingham had identified the need to promote sport at more universities across the country, not just the elite establishments. They formed the Inter-Varsity Athletics Board, and in 1922, rugby was added to the programme.

Then, in 1930, the Universities Athletic Union, or for the love of another acronym, the UAU, was started. This was the first time that universities were able to compete in a domestic competition involving multiple teams.

At its inception, the competition was dominated by Swansea, who won the UAU six times in seven seasons, beating Loughborough in the 1939 final.

Loughborough started to build their reputation as one on the country’s ‘go-to’ rugby establishments in the post-war years. They had two future England captains among their ranks in Eric Evans and Jeff Butterfield, as well as future secretary of the Welsh Rugby Union, Ray Williams. In 1953, the same year that Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, Loughborough won the UAU for the first time, and thereby cemented themselves as the team to beat in the Midlands. 

The culture boom of the sixties saw The Beatles record their first album, England win the football World Cup, and the very first women’s rugby union team formed at Edinburgh University, in 1962.  

Meanwhile, Loughborough were being led by John Robins who would become the first coach of the British Lions. His student side faced some formidable opponents, with clashes against the club sides from Leicester, Gloucester and London Irish on their fixture list. During Robins’ 1960s tenure, Loughborough won the UAU six times, before Robins parted ways with the team in 1967 and was  replaced by Jim Greenwood. 

To this day, Jim is considered one of rugby’s visionaries. With twenty caps for Scotland and four for the Lions, he was an advocate of ‘total rugby’, a coined phrase that was the title of one of his pivotal coaching books, written duringhis time at Loughborough. He was posthumously inducted into the IRB Hall of Fame in 2014. 

In 1969, an annual home and away fixture for Loughborough against St Luke’s College from Exeter was started. The College had put their hand up as the student team to beat in the south-west of the country and would later be amalgamated into the University of Exeter.

With Jim in charge, Loughborough surged forward on their path of dominance, winning the first UAU final to be held at Twickenham in 1970. That season’s side included six future internationals, the most notable being Fran Cotton and Steve Smith, who would earn more than 50 England caps between them. 

Loughborough continued to win titles, and attract big names throughout the next decade, with Clive Woodward and Andy Robinson both captaining the side during this period. 

As the sport moved towards professionalism and the RFU formed an official league pyramid in 1987, Loughborough initially turned down a spot in National 2. When they eventually applied to join the league, they were forced to work from the bottom up. Despite the post-war golden years that had spanned nearly four decades, it was soon very clear that the impressive standards once held by the university had been left behind by the professional era.

Change was clearly needed if they were to keep up with the rest of the pack. It came in the form of Ian Smith, otherwise known as ‘Dosser’, who was appointed the university’s first director of rugby in 1998. 

However, Smith left Loughborough after just three seasons, replaced by the man credited with modernising the club: Alan Buzza. 

With Buzza as DoR, Loughborough secured back-to-back league promotions, and won the British Universities Championship twice during the noughties. By 2008, the team had been promoted to National League 2 North, becoming the first student side to compete at that level. 

Loughborough were the trojan horse for university sides taking part in the English professional league system. They opened the doors for other student establishments to compete in the pyramid. Hartpury are a prime example: once a humble home for agricultural students and various livestock, they now have state-of-the-art training facilities, a team in the Championship, and several BUCS titles on their mantlepiece.

Today, Loughborough have teams competing in National 2 West, the BSR, and the Premier 15s, as well as six student teams at different levels of the BUCS league. 

Rhys Edwards, who had previously worked as the national lead for women’s rugby at the Welsh Rugby Union for six years, took on the director of rugby role at Loughborough in 2019. 

“I came with the specific responsibility of setting up a Premier 15s team,” Rhys tells us from the floodlit touchline, as Loughborough and Cardiff continue to battle on the pitch. “Now I oversee twelve teams, six men’s and six women’s.” 

The facilities that Loughborough boast are built to an elite standard, big enough for all twelve teams, as well as the many other sports clubs that exist within the university. As Rhys shows us around Powerbase, the campus gym that is also open to the public, the rehabilitation rooms, and the Olympic length swimming pool with a raising bottom to allow for recovery exercises, he talks about the importance of sporting opportunities to the students. 

“Sport is one of the main pillars of the university,” he continues. “We have a department for educational and lifestyle support for athletes. 

“For example, if somebody gets called up to a sevens tournament on the other side of the world, this department supports those guys in moving deadlines, or even sitting their exams abroad.” 

Having finished our tour of the facilities, conversation turns to the state of play in the BUCS Super Rugby league.  “Pretty much anybody could beat anybody,” Rhys admits, “it’s a real spectacle for people to go and watch.”

His point is backed up by the numbers on the night, a vocal crowd of students creating a strong atmosphere around the pitch.  “We’re starting to get some good exposure,” he continues, “we average about two, to two and a half thousand for a game on a Wednesday night. Our students come out in full force.” 

It is not just the fans that are turning out to watch the game. Take a lap of the pitch and you’ll notice the representatives of various clubs and international sides, identifiable by the badges on their hats and jackets.

“The academies are starting to realise it’s value,” he explains, referring to the pool of talent in the league, “whereas historically, if an academy player was offered a contract, and then they said they wanted to go to university, it was kind of frowned upon. 

“There is certainly a shift in mindset,” he adds. “The professional side of the game is recognising the value of young, student athletes, regularly playing with similar aged players.” 

The game between Loughborough and Cardiff ends 31-10, a commanding performance from the home side securing them their place at the top of the BSR, for now. Cardiff, however, were not too far off the pace, and remain only a couple of points behind them in the league table, leaving it all still to play for as the season nears the halfway point.

In the years that it has taken Loughborough to establish themselves as one of the best university teams in the country, the timeline of British Universities and Colleges Sport has been through more acronyms than we could list. However, in 2008, University and College Sport (UCS) and the British Universities Sport Association (BUSA) merged to form BUCS, which has since been the national voice for university sport. 

Andy Givalry has been a part of the BUCS team for four years, and currently works as the programme’s head of competitions and performance. “We have 41 programmes, and a 164 members,” he explains. “Within that there are 850 leagues, 5,000 teams, and 30,000 fixtures a year.”

BUCS aims to provide opportunities for students looking to compete across 52 different sports, varying from casual to elite-level participation. 

With rugby being the fourth most played sport on the programme, the need for a premier division was met with the establishment of the BSR in 2016. The league hosts the ten best university sides from the men’s game and is played over eighteen rounds of exciting, fast-paced fixtures, 

“BUCS Super Rugby is a premier competition,” he continues, “and there is definitely an appetite for professional clubs looking at the BSR.

“I think that’s evident with the amount of players that have signed professional contracts in the last few years.”

With universities such as Loughborough having invested so much in their world-class facilities, and even young rugby universities such as Cardiff striving to level the playing field, there is a clear mission to match the standards of professionalism that young players might expect from pro clubs.

It is an entirely different landscape from that in 1995, or before, when Oxford and Cambridge were the only two establishments with the resources to attract the best student athletes. Nowadays, there are ten teams in the BSR, all boasting state-of-the-art facilities. 

“They offer strength and conditioning, post-game rehab,” continues Andy, “they give nutritional support – the students are training as if they are semi-professional athletes while balancing their career at university.” 

As well as the development of the BSR, there is also a dedication to better the pathways for women going through the university system and into professional, or semi-professional teams. “We know the Women’s National League is gaining momentum,” he adds, “it’s becoming a parallel with the BSR in terms of reputation, and the students engaging with it.” 

On the future of BUCS, Andy has high hopes for an upward trajectory
across the board.

“The BSR has set a precedent,” he continues, “and I’d love for the women’s game to continue moving in tandem with it. I would also love to see some further commercial attachment to the programme: it’s a product like no other.” 

As both the men and women’s side of university rugby continues to grow, there is hope that the BUCS set-up can continue to build positive relationships with the professional game, as well as providing pathways for students looking to play at a more casual level.  “It should continue to be used as a talent identification tool for governing bodies,” he adds, “and also if you’re looking to play but you don’t make the BSR, what sits underneath is still an awesome ecosystem of rugby union.”

Story by Tyrone Bulger

Pictures by Darryl Vides

This extract was taken from issue 20 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.