Six months. That was all it took for North American rugby to slump from its high to its low.
In May 2022, it was announced that the men’s 2031 Rugby World Cup (RWC) would be held in the United States, followed by the women’s tournament two years later. President Joe Biden sent a letter of support — securing the first major rugby tournament to be held in the Americas.
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But then came November. The United States had one final chance to qualify for this autumn’s RWC in France — having already spurned two chances in the shape of play-off losses to Uruguay and Chile, the latter of those by just a single point on aggregate. There were dramatic scenes in both of these fixtures — in the second leg against Uruguay, the USA were without three of their best players due to freak incidents. In the first leg against Chile, a downpour broke the floodlights just as the USA were about to score. Chile regrouped and eventually won the tie.
But here was a winner-takes-all clash against minnows Portugal, who had only ever reached one previous tournament.
In the event, it only took a draw to deny the USA — a last-minute penalty from Portugal scrum-half Samuel Marques sending his side through on points difference. The gap only existed because Kenya, another side in the play-off tournament, had played an understrength team against Portugal but not the USA. Nevertheless, this was a failure — but by the narrowest of margins.
With Canada eliminated by Chile one year earlier, North American rugby found itself in an unprecedented position.
The RWC has been held every four years since 1987. Every edition has featured one of the USA or Canada — and typically both. The 2023 edition will be the first to feature neither.
“It was gut-wrenching,” says vastly experienced USA coach Gary Gold, a South African who stepped down after the failure to qualify. “Maybe we shouldn’t overdramatise sport like this, but the pain felt like when you lose somebody very close to you.”
North American results at RWCs
| United States | Canada | |
|---|---|---|
1987 | Group (3rd of 4) | Group (3rd of 4) |
1991 | Group (4th of 4) | Quarter-finals |
1995 | Didn't qualify | Group (3rd of 4) |
1999 | Group (4th of 4) | Group (3rd of 4) |
2003 | Group (4th of 5) | Group (4th of 5) |
2007 | Group (5th of 5) | Group (5th of 5) |
2011 | Group (4th of 5) | Group (4th of 5) |
2015 | Group (5th of 5) | Group (5th of 5) |
2019 | Group (5th of 5) | Group (5th of 5) |
2023 | Didn't qualify | Didn't qualify |
Is the United States a rugby country?
This is a sport of presidents after all — as well as Biden, who developed an interest through his Irish heritage, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and John F Kennedy all played the sport at college. Bush, in particular, was a talented member of the Yale first XV, playing at full-back — the last line of defence.
Joe Taufete'e is a try scoring machine! 5 tries makes him the leading try scorer in #ARC2019 pic.twitter.com/rjjrvlC3kG
— World Rugby (@WorldRugby) March 9, 2019
Given their talent level, the USA should be at the World Cup. Hooker Joe Taufeteʻe is one of the best ball-carriers in his position globally. Scrum-half Ruben de Haas won the English Premiership with Saracens this season. AJ MacGinty is one of the best fly-halves in that league — the most important position in the sport.
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But on the other hand, the USA have always struggled to develop playing interest outside the college system, leading to a tiny player base distributed widely across the country. Culturally, it is seen as an option for failed American football players and was famously mocked in a 1998 episode of sitcom Friends.
Among the favourites for this autumn’s tournament are New Zealand and Ireland, two countries with populations of just five million. Wales, another traditional powerhouse, have just three million yet have reached the semi-final in two of the last three tournaments. Though the United States has a population of 330 million, they lag far behind in rugby culture — and with it, player development, infrastructure, and funding.
“The potential is extraordinary,” says Gold. “But structurally, the game hasn’t been run properly. I’m not necessarily pointing the finger at anyone, but fundamentally the issue is money — rugby struggles to generate income and generating income means more time in camp, more time in camp means an improved group of players.”
In the majority of sports, the United States can boast one of the world’s richest governing bodies. That is not the case here. In contrast to smaller nations in Europe or Oceania, the size of the United States means drawing a squad together is also a significant challenge.
“You could dress it up, but USA Rugby is an embryonic governing body, or was even a failing governing body from a commercial reality having had to recover from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy,” says Mike Friday, an Englishman who coaches the USA’s successful programme in rugby sevens (a smaller form of the 15-a-side game.)
“Compared to the traditional superpowers, we’re a start-up company in a garage.”
“Historically our whole men’s XV yearly budget was less than Eddie Jones’ salary as head coach of England,” explains Ross Young, CEO of USA Rugby. “That counts running events, players’ fees, everything. It’s impossible to compete when you have restricted resources and everyone around you is improving.”
Having previously relied on a string of angel investors for funding, World Rugby stepped in to bail out the governing body in 2020. Other factors did not help.
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“As a nation, as a governing body, as a team, we didn’t deal with the Covid-19 period well,” says Will Hooley, a member of the side during qualification, who previously played for English sides Saracens and Northampton Saints. The fly-half/full-back expected the RWC to be his final professional matches after undergoing a shoulder reconstruction last year but was instead forced into retirement without that final farewell.
“From the beginning of the qualifying process, we were clutching at straws to get through.”
In qualification, the USA’s main rivals were South American sides. During the pandemic, they created Super Rugby Americas, a competition in which the Chilean and Uruguayan national teams effectively participated as club sides, allowing them to build chemistry throughout the disruption despite the fact neither side had overwhelming funding behind them.
In contrast, the United States did not play for almost two years between the end of the previous RWC in October 2019 and a summer friendly against England in July 2021.
The team also had relatively little time in camp together before games. For one match against New Zealand in October 2021 — the most dominant rugby team of the 21st century — the United States were only able to pick players from the domestic Major League Rugby competition (MLR). The match took place outside an international window which would oblige European clubs to release their U.S. players and led to a much weaker side.
The result at Washington’s FedEx Field was a humbling 104-14.
“You have to look at the three-year lead-up in terms of time together and the lack of test matches,” said Friday of the qualification campaign. “Was getting spanked by 100 points by New Zealand giving them the best opportunity to succeed? Probably not.”
Gold was even stronger. “It made no sense to me why you would have a game like that — you would rather just spend the week training.”
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As justification, the match was an opportunity to bring money in for USA Rugby — while the chance to see the All Blacks play is a significant growth opportunity. From a competitiveness standpoint, New Zealand had been scheduled to play a development side — but Covid-19 regulations meant the All Blacks needed to bring a reduced squad, featuring only frontline players.
In previous qualification campaigns, the USA had only needed to beat Canada to qualify — with the loser advancing to a winnable repechage. For this competition, World Rugby brought together North America with the rapidly improving South American teams to justifiably give the latter more opportunities to qualify, if they were good enough. They were.
“Twenty months before qualification, we handed Uruguay and Chile 70 points,” Gold says. “After gaining cohesion, spending time together in camp, they were able to beat us. How do you justify that? We have to own it. Did we fall off the wheel significantly, or were those teams able to improve rapidly? I think it’s a combination of both.”
“A lot of those unions have concentrated on their men’s 15s,” justifies Young. “Canada are the same as us, with a very strong women’s programme. We have spread our resources across sevens and 15s, men’s and women’s teams across big geographies without centrally contracted players.”
Nevertheless, the failure to qualify was still a catastrophic blow, with those involved left searching for consolation.
“The game plans were on par,” says Jimmy Harrison, who works as an analyst for USA Rugby. “There were just a few execution errors. But if we had qualified, it would just have put a bandaid over issues. There are things which need to be fixed.”
Hooley agrees. “As USA Rugby, we got it wrong. That’s from a playing front all the way through the organisation. But there have been massive lessons learned. Hitting this reset button for USA Rugby is probably one of the best things that could have happened.”
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The governing body acknowledges that realistically, they would have hoped for one win at most had they qualified for the 2023 RWC. Instead, they used the money saved to send the men’s under-20s to the Junior World Championship and to invest in women’s programmes. Attention has turned to 2027 and 2031.
But it is clear that Gold is still coming to terms with how his spell in charge ended.
“People want the other narrative and they want somebody to blame and that’s fine,” he says from his home in South Africa. “That’s why I walked away and took the blame.
“But if people are wanting to blame somebody — the coaches, the administration, the players — you still have to fix it. You’ve got to find a solution.”
Gary Gold (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)Canada’s failure to qualify was perhaps even longer in the making. Though the women’s team have been historically successful — reaching a RWC final in 2014 and a semi-final in 2021 — the men have not won a match at the competition since 2011.
The 2015 tournament in England was the first time that had happened and it was repeated four years later in Japan — though the Canada team were unlucky that their final game against fellow Tier 2 nation Namibia was cancelled due to Typhoon Hagibis, which wrecked the tournament’s final round of group matches. Subsequently, the Canada team went viral for their help in clean-up efforts.
台風19号の影響で、本日の試合が中止になったカナダ代表 @RugbyCanada🇨🇦
そのまま釜石の町に残り、ボランティア活動を行いました🍁✨#RWC2019 #RWC釜石 #NAMvCAN pic.twitter.com/bwTpHAJPsV
— ラグビーワールドカップ™ (@rugbyworldcupjp) October 13, 2019
In hindsight, the decision to sack coach Kieran Crowley after the 2015 RWC was a mistake — the New Zealander has done a remarkable job in turning round the Italy programme leading into this autumn’s competition.
In his place, Canada Rugby have stood behind replacement Kingsley Jones, who bounced into the job after a disappointing spell with the Dragons, a Welsh club side who are perennial underachievers in their domestic league.
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To be fair to Jones, he inherited a difficult situation. Like their U.S. counterparts, Rugby Canada is extremely underfunded — with lots of money going towards the sevens programme — while there is also only a small player pool, with the country having historic difficulties in converting youth participation into senior club members.
This has a knock-on effect at elite level. The Toronto Arrows are the only Canadian team in the North American league (the aforementioned MLR), leading to a bottleneck in player development, with youngsters unable to gain exposure to top-level rugby. Two domestic teams would help solve this — with the current system meaning that when a string of experienced players retired in recent seasons, their back-ups were not ready to replace them.
In truth, Canada were not particularly close to qualifying — losing 54-46 on aggregate to Chile, ranked seven places below them. During that series, criticism swirled around Jones’ out-of-date defensive system — but Rugby Canada stuck with their coach despite the failure.
World Rugby see North America as vital to their future.
The sport’s governing body supported and partially funded MLR, which was launched amid glitz, glamour, and a string of high-profile signings in 2016. They also finance the USA Hawks, a youth development side.
One change is the most significant. After this year’s tournament, World Rugby will change their hosting model for RWC tournaments, shifting from a system where the host country both pays for the tournament and receives the profit (in this case France) to one in which World Rugby bears both the risk and reward.
This allows poorer unions to host the RWC — bringing the opportunity to the United States. At World Rugby headquarters in Dublin, the 2031 tournament has been nicknamed “the North Star”.
It’s official.
The United States will host the Men’s and Women’s @rugbyworldcup in 2031 and 2033.
🇺🇸 Read more: https://t.co/oSCkRVThDm@USARugby | @WorldRugby pic.twitter.com/hjWjHdZjbb
— Major League Rugby (@usmlr) May 12, 2022
“North America is comfortably the largest sporting market in the world,” says Steve Lewis, the General Manager (GM) of MLR side Rugby United New York. “For many of us, World Rugby included, the belief is that this is the goose that lays the golden egg.
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“You actually only need a tiny sliver of this market to have a significant financial impact. This is not the final frontier, but it’s the largest unconquered one.”
MLR, which has developed a reputation for its entertaining style, as well as introducing the draft system for the first time, is the keystone. Launched five years ago, the hope is that the children subsequently inspired to try the sport will be old enough to play in 2031.
At that home World Cup, the aim is not just to be competitive, but to escape the group stages for the first time. The precedent is there — Japan were winless at the 2011 RWC before delivering the greatest shock in tournament history by beating South Africa in 2015 and then qualifying for the knockout stages on home soil in 2019. USA Rugby have the same eight-year run-up.
The question is how to do it. Japan were helped by spending long periods in camp together – almost six months before the 2019 RWC. Gold has suggested bringing in central contracting, a system by which player salaries are paid by the national team rather than clubs in return for more access to players.
After Gold’s departure, USA Rugby appointed former player Scott Lawrence as interim head coach. Addressing the lack of appropriate fixtures, he led the side on a tour of Europe to play three teams who qualified for the Rugby World Cup — Romania, Portugal, and Georgia. A 31-17 victory over Romania was an encouraging step.
But part of the issue is also talent. North American rugby has always found it difficult to develop players at skill positions, such as scrum-half and fly-half. Collectively known as the half-backs, these two players touch the ball more than any other attacker, setting up the team strategically.
While North American rugby has been able to convert players from other sports to play in positions which are more reliant on athleticism than rugby intelligence, elite half-backs need to have played there from a young age.
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It is analogous to how international players, who have taken the game up late, have made NFL rosters at positions such as offensive and defensive line, but never at quarterback.
For Gold, MLR needs to give more exposure to young U.S. players in these positions.
“There’s far too many foreign players in key positions,” he says. “I don’t believe the working relationship between MLR and USA Rugby is where it needs to be — it’s not terrible, but it’s not where it needs to be.”
“When you can only put 10 foreigners in your matchday squad, it is natural you put your highest-paid and best players in the most important positions,” explains MLR boss Lewis. “When you have a league, which is commercial for profit and where coaches are hired and fired based on performance, they are disinclined to take a chance on a young American fly-half.”
Getting the sport into high schools has been described as the ‘Holy Grail’ by organisers. Despite nodes of interest in California, Utah, and Colorado, rugby is only in the core high-school curriculum in one state — Massachusetts. USA Rugby is particularly keen to develop the sport in the south, where it has a negligible presence.
High school basketball and American football coaches, however, have been wary of introducing rugby because of the risk of injury to any multi-sport athletes.
Major League Rugby (Rich Schultz/Getty Images for Rugby New York)“There needs to be a philosophy change at high schools to be centred around the sporting development of the individual as opposed to early specialisation and becoming results orientated at an early age,” says Friday. “I think that’s the biggest challenge because that’s the mentality in American sport.”
He sees sevens as central to the development of rugby in the country. Less overtly physical than the 15-a-side game, it is also in the Olympics.
“If you can’t be an NFL player, or an NBA player, or a baseball player, you want to be an Olympian,” Friday adds. “That’s the biggest thing in America. So from a sporting perspective, the very fact that the sevens is in the Olympics catapults it up the pecking order into an aspirational sport for athletes and also the sporting eyeballs that support and watch.”
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When it comes to participation, the early signs have been encouraging. The San Diego Legion attracted 9,000 fans to a recent MLR game, an attendance greater than many English Premiership clubs regularly achieve.
“You’re starting to get an actual fan culture, you’re starting to get a base,” says Lewis.
“It doesn’t have to be millions and millions of people playing the game because that’s not the case in other countries that have been able to get it right,” adds Gold. “It just needs a proper pathway programme.”
Rugby is desperate to break into North America. There is an eight-year runway before a home World Cup. It is now up to USA and Canada Rugby to take it — and ensure that failure to qualify is a beginning, not an ending.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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