THEY may have experienced rugby in the top tier of Asia but for all their achievements thus far, the Philippines have their feet firmly on the ground by simply accepting reality and adopting a pragmatic attitude.
This realism is a result of being at the wrong side of cricket scores against the continent’s Top Three when they played in the top tier of the Asian Rugby Championship in 2013 and 2014.
Thereafter the Philippines Volcanoes found themselves relegated with Sri Lanka to the second tier when the Asian Rugby Football Union decided not to have the playoff for fourth and fifth spots last year.
From this year the Asian Rugby Football Union decided to have Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong playing in the Top Three, with the third-placed team meeting the winner of division one in a promotion-relegation playoff.
Despite going down, the Philippines are clearly happy to be where they are instead of being turned into Asian rugby’s laughing stock.
One man who has no hesitation agreeing with the new format is Matt Cullen, director of rugby of the Philippines Rugby Union.
His view: “There is no joy in being beaten by 80 or 90 points by the likes of Japan and Hong Kong. It doesn’t do anything to help the development of the game. We need to be in a competition that is not one-sided.”
The statistics show that the Philippines lost all their games against the Asian big three in 2013 and 2014.
In 2013 it was 121-0 to Japan, 62-19 to South Korea and 59-20 to Hong Kong. That meant 242 points against versus 39 for.
Last year it was 108-0 to Hong Kong, 99-0 to Japan and 52-22 to South Korea – 259 against and 22 for.
Sri Lanka, the other Asian team that had the opportunity to test their strength against the big boys, did not fare that much better.
In 2011 they lost to Hong Kong 48-3 and Japan 90-13. Last year they lost 41-10 to Hong Kong, 59-3 to South Korea and 132-10 to Hong Kong.
Cullen was also right to talk about the development of the game, certainly in the Philippines where it is a minor sport and virtually unknown to most Filipinos.
The national union was only formed in 1999 and records show that the sport before that had been played almost entirely by expatriates and students at international schools.
But Malaysia, where rugby was introduced by the British in the late 20th century, cannot be still talking about development.
About the only time one could talk about development of rugby in Malaysia was around the late 60s, when the country saw more and more Malaysians taking up the game and less and less expatriates available to play it.
That was the time when rugby’s future direction eventually came under the control of Malaysians.
In Kuala Lumpur, Royal Selangor Club were the only open club team to have more expats than others while in Perak it was the Ipoh Club.
The latter had only two foreigners in the team in 1969, one of them former Malaysian captain Roy Holder, while in the next few years the team had one expat, usually a British teacher at one of the schools in Ipoh.
Having seen these changes and having had more local clubs formed since 1970, for all intents and purposes Malaysian rugby passed the development stage decades ago.
Thus what local officials should be talking about now is consolidation.
It should be about strengthening the various national teams and deciding what we could possibly achieve within Asia.
Forget about the World Cup or the World Sevens Series, for our rugby is at best only good for the second tier in Asia.
Best to take a leaf from the Philippines’ pragmatism and adopt a similar approach here.