The reality of a college rugby tournament…

There’s a college rugby tournament happening in Danville this weekend. Ha! You didn’t know about it either, huh?

Now this isn’t just any group of rugby teams… these are all teams made of MBA students from colleges all over the world. This is pretty big for Danville’s hotels and restaurants as some of the teams stay and eat here. The tournament is held down at Angler’s Park, so there’s not a lot of parking plus rugby really isn’t a spectator sport unless you’ve got announcers and commentators describing the game (unsurprisingly, not a lot of people know the rules and terminology).

For the previous few years, we’ve been told that this is a giant economic development opportunity for Danville because they talk to these MBA students and encourage them to move to Danville once they graduate to live here and maybe start a new business. It would be unfair to call this effort a Job Bust but I do believe the success rate of that effort so far is sitting at 0%.

I haven’t seen that hype and spin yet this year, but I’m sure that it’s still going on. So, what does the average college student/rugby player think about while playing in a tournament like this? Things like… A) My, what a beautiful park!  B) I really want to return here and live forever! C) What kind of business financing can I get to start my new company? Those would be awesome things for a graduate student to think about Danville, right?

Let’s get real, people. Here’s what I found on the Internet last night…

Ta-da! there you go. Hey, they’re here for partying and gone tomorrow. Big surprise.