Rugby union takes foothold in US with rise of crossover competitors

[Sheikh]

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blo...all-basketball

On the back of possible World Cup qualification and increased interest, American footballers and basketball players are realising there is a global sport that suits their skill set


There are always those who would prefer rugby union to remain untouched by progress. Think of some of the things now taken for granted that felt bold at the time: the inaugural Rugby World Cup (1987), the five-point try (1992), the advent of professionalism (1995). When people blithely trot out the cliche that rugby will never take off in the US, they do so with the same confidence the Flat Earth Society used to exude in the good old days before satellite technology spoiled everything.

Look at the evidence and make up your own mind. The population of the US is more than 310 million. Olympic recognition for rugby sevens has freed up the sort of national funding that had been a distant dream. There are thousands of American footballers and basketball players who are not going to gain a professional NFL or NBA contracts but who are increasingly realising there is a global sport that potentially suits their skill set perfectly. Perhaps the most feared forward in the Premiership, Northampton's Samu Manoa, is an American international. The All Blacks are set to play a Test in the States – the likely venue is Soldier Field, Chicago – on 1 November.

Stick it all together and you have a country that, one day, really could play ball with the best of them.

The $60m question, surely, is when rather than if. The 2016 Olympics in Rio will have the American women's sevens team pushing for a medal. In last week's Tokyo leg of the HSBC Sevens, the American men beat Samoa and drew with the eventual champions Fiji. There are 25 rugby players training full time at the US Olympic training centre in California; the vast majority are sevens players but not exclusively so.

Premiership clubs will also once again be flying out to monitor the national college sevens in Philadelphia at the end of May, an event screened by NBC Sports. A company called RugbyLaw is trying to establish a professional club tournament in the US and is holding trials in Minnesota early next month – presided over by the former Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan – for gridiron athletes keen to pursue a union career. They include a former wide receiver named Yamon Figurs, who apparently makes the American sevens blur, Carlin Isles, look pedestrian. The concept of "crossover" athletes is definitely on the rise. All it needs is for something – or someone – to stoke public interest on a wider scale. It could just happen this Saturday. If the USA Eagles defeat Uruguay in Atlanta, Georgia, they will qualify for next year's Rugby World Cup in England – in the same group as South Africa, Scotland, Samoa and Asia 1 (probably Japan), and kick-start all kinds of fresh star-spangled possibilities.

The International Rugby Board believes American-based rugby supporters are already in the top three in terms of numbers when it comes to travelling abroad to watch Rugby World Cups. It does not require much imagination, should they make it to next year's tournament, to foresee Eagles fans enjoying themselves in Brighton before and after their potential opening pool game against Samoa, or relishing a trip to the Olympic Stadium, where they would be facing South Africa.

Yes, the flat-earthers will say, but the Americans were stating this in the early 1990s and they are still nowhere near becoming a consistent international force. But steady on. In November, the Eagles defeated Georgia the week before their opponents beat the not inconsiderable might of Samoa. They should also have beaten an (admittedly weakened) Ireland last June and are already licking their lips at the prospect of Scotland's visit to Houston on 7 June.

Admittedly, they only drew 27-27 with Uruguay in last week's first-leg qualifier, almost falling foul of their hosts' superior scrummaging muscle, but their European-based pros were still blinking away their jet lag. This week, with Northampton's Manoa, Leicester's Blaine Scully, Saracens' Chris Wyles et al able to enjoy a full week of preparation, they will fully expect to make home advantage pay.

In the background, too, there is increasing private money being invested to try to strengthen the grassroots of American rugby, with some other interesting organisations doing their best to accelerate that process. Among them is Serevi Rugby, who count the former Rugby World Cup tournament manager Ross Young and the former England sevens international Ben Gollings as chief executive and lead coach respectively. Armed with corporate and private equity investment, Young and his group hope to fill the gaps that USA Rugby, presided over by the former England captain Nigel Melville, cannot always reach.

"Until I came across I didn't realise rugby is as big as it is, especially around the smaller colleges in the US and in terms of the women's game," Young says. "Our role is to drive awareness further, get kids involved from as young an age as possible and help provide a pathway through to national representation."

Representing the US at the Olympics is an obvious carrot but, stresses Young, there is also recognition that progress is not only about the top of the pyramid. "The long-term goal is to make rugby successful in the US. It took soccer a long while but they certainly have a strong foothold here now."

The thousands of Samoan and Tongan ex-pats in the Bay area of San Francisco where Manoa grew up offer obvious raw material; there is also a growing belief the spatial awareness of basketball players could make them even better rugby assets than more programmed gridiron linebackers or tightends.

In the past few days, a New Zealand company, The Rugby Site, has sold its coaching modules to USA Rugby, which means any affiliated US coach can download tips from such names as Wayne Smith, Joe Schmidt and Richie McCaw to a mobile phone and instantly use them at training. The rugby world is changing fast.

So, no pressure on the Eagles to get the job done in Atlanta this Saturday. "Rugby World Cup qualification is massively important," Young says. "NBC showed the 2011 tournament on terrestrial television for the first time and there's talk about them doing more. They've put on Premiership games prior to Premier League football on a Saturday morning. Sport is hugely aspirational over here and success at national level is crucial."

It might take another two decades for the American dream to be realised fully but to insist it will never happen in a million years is the kind of nihilistic thinking rugby union needs to eradicate.

[Alison]

I have an American friend in Massachusetts who LOVES rugby with a passion and is a huge Force fan to boot! They don't broadcast many games on the TV at the moment though so I hope for her sake that the USA qualify and that the game really takes off!

[chibi]

I have no problem with rugby's "American Dream" as this article seems to point toward, but what about rugby nations who have touched the top level of the game and then been left to wither away? One good USA isn't worth losing a Canada or Romania, nor should we now give up on Georgia. Where was the iRB when Canada were in the World Cup quarter-finals? When the Romanians were conquering Five Nations teams? Was the iRB too busy looking at the USA then?

One major reason for the nay-sayers when it comes to the USA rugby situation is not because we believe it won't grow; on the contrary, it's because we know rugby has been huge in the USA for the last century or so, as the continually-floundering USA has always had one of the largest playing populations in the world. With the resources at it's disposal, the Americans should have been in the top 5 rugby nations for the last 70 years or so. One of their problems is the culture of the game in their country. The players are mainly club players, even universities with large rugby clubs don't even have the game on the varsity program. There is a tremendous amount of players who move on from their younger days into more social rugby, rather than competitive rugby. The USA's issue is structural, and they haven't addressed these issues historically. Calling nay-sayers nihilistic or mentioning recent victories is terribly ignorant, as it doesn't focus on problems which have existed perpetually, not just over the last 10 years. The USA have had the odd period of competitiveness throughout their history: they ran the world champion Wallabies damn close in the early 90's, they beat the French in Paris for their Olympic gold medal; not all the nay-sayers are speaking from sheer bloody-mindedness or ignorance, but from a legitimate understanding of the history of rugby in that country; and - as I'll point out, American culture and sports-culture.

The other major problem as to why they haven't addressed these issues, in the bigger overall picture; is that I can't see the Americans putting any major effort, heart and soul into any team sport which has legitimate international competition. It's what has prevented soccer getting into the mainstream psyche despite also having huge player numbers; once dominant in basketball, now that there are more foreign players in the NBA, they are not picking their best "dream-team" for the Olympics and down-playing the importance of Olympic basketball; they have never promoted the World Baseball Classic or Olympic baseball as the real World Championships, knowing that Japan, Australia, Cuba, Korea and Latin America can show them up; they are even relegating ice hockey once again, because of their recent loss in the Olympics to Canada. How would it look to American TV sports viewers if they saw the USA playing in front of a packed home crowd of 50,000 chanting "USA! USA!" and then getting seriously brutalised by South Africa or France? They would HATE that, they would switch the channel and exclaim "We weren't takin' this serious! It's a stupid foreign game anyway!" Which is what they do now for soccer and ice hockey. Canada, on the other hand would use the game as way to further foster an independent, more world-orientated identity away from the USA. And what a great way to have Francophones gain an interest the game than by hosting France in Quebec somewhere?

I suppose I'm ranting once again, but this stupid "Rugby's American Dream" concept rears it's head every 10 years or so and it really gets my goat. It's only ONE bloody country after all. Say what we like about markets and revenue, but when it boils down to it, it's only ONE more quality rugby nation we'd be looking at. This USA focus and targeting of China and Brazil in a game of one-up-man-ship against soccer at national and club level, has caused the iRB to miss out on developing other countries since the 1990's. Back then Côte d’Ivoire, Namibia, Morocco, Tunisia, Canada, Portugal, Spain, Chile, Uruguay, Romania, Croatia, Poland, Russia and Ukraine were LEVEL OR BETTER than Georgia! That's FOURTEEN rugby nations we could have pulled up to a higher level by now. If we think that's overly ambitious, look at cricket. When I was a little kid, there was no Sri Lanka in test cricket, now they've won a world cup. Holland has beaten England. Kenya were world cup quarter-finalists. Scotland, Ireland, Bangladesh (and for special occasions, Wales) have formidable ODI teams with even more countries at Twenty20 level. Canada has beaten Australia and the West Indies at the world cup. Holy crap, Afghanistan is actually playing a sport!!! And it's cricket! Now look at rugby. The 1991 World Cup was arguably the most level and competitive world cup we ever had across all teams, and that was over 20 years ago! The Pacific Islands (due to professional contracts and eligibility laws,) Romania and Canada have actually gone backwards. For all the talk of growing the game's geographical footprint at its lower levels in comparison to soccer; our game has actually SHRUNK at its highest level. Cricket? Well the only country which has gone backwards is Zimbabwe, and that has nothing to do with cricket anyway.

[AndyS]

I agree in many respects, but take a slightly different view of this. I am not so much interested in their national side, that will take care of itself. As you note they are more about clubs - for mine, their primary significance is actually what even a "small" interest on their part could translate into by way of funding via a Super style comp involving Canada and a range of South American nations. That includes Argentina, who I don't think should be anywhere near SR if there is a more appropriate option in their own time-zone. The yanks bring money, Canada and Argentina bring credibility, the yanks what they do best by way of sales & marketing, and a load of the smaller players go along for the ride. So it then isn't just one more quality country; their money potentially bring several teams into consideration.

Frankly, the sort of money that even some US interest could generate is probably the only real hope an Argentina has of getting players back from Europe. I can't see involving them in SR doing it - we don't even generate enough to stop our own leaving.