Harlequins will face the US Eagles on 30 August at PPL Park in Philadelphia. The match will form part of the Eagles’ warm-up schedule for the World Cup in England in September.
“We look forward to welcoming Harlequins to the USA this August,” said Nigel Melville, chairman and chief executive of USA Rugby. “This fixture is an exciting opportunity for both teams. Philadelphia is truly a rugby hotbed and we are excited to be back.”
The Eagles last played at PPL Park, the home of the Philadelphia Union Major League Soccer team, in November 2013. In front of a raucous and sell-out 18,500 crowd, they lost 29-19 to the touring Maori All Blacks. A year later, at Soldier Field in Chicago, 61,500 watched as they were beaten 74-6 by the full New Zealand All Blacks.
The game against Harlequins, the 2012 English Premiership champions, will take place in the city of brotherly love in the same month as a scheduled game between Leicester and the NRFL Rough Riders. The Rough Riders will be the first team fielded by an organisation – not affiliated to or approved by USA Rugby – looking to convert college and NFL football players to rugby. That game is set to be played at Lincoln Financial Field, the home of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles, which holds 50,000 more fans that PPL Park.
The two August fixtures indicate growing interest in Premiership rugby clubs in the US market. Such interest is particularly focused on the east coast, where the staging of regular-season fixtures has been mooted and where community coaches have worked around the College Rugby Championship Sevens, also held at PPL Park. Saracens have engaged with the strong north-western rugby scene, where the Old Puget Sound Beach club recently renamed itself the Seattle Saracens.
Greeting Wednesday’s announcement, Harlequins chief executive David Ellis said: “Harlequins is a globally recognised club, and this match will help drive our global ambitions. Rugby in the USA is a sleeping giant and we are looking forward to being a part of this unique occasion as we begin to help develop the sport in America.”
International teams have also turned their eyes to the US: a reported $1m World Cup warm-up between the Eagles and Australia, potentially back at Soldier Field, home of the NFL’s Chicago Bears, has yet to be confirmed.
USA Rugby, meanwhile, is exploring the possibility of launching a professional club competition before the 2019 World Cup, which will take place in Japan. Such a league would primarily be built on talent from the increasingly strong US college scene.
“We’re talking to investors,” Melville told the Guardian in February. “We’ve still got some way to go but it’s closer to reality than it ever has been.”
USA Rugby has also bid to host a game between the Eagles and the British and Irish Lions on the latter’s way to New Zealand in 2017, and the Sevens World Cup in 2018, in San Francisco. A bid for the full World Cup is possible. Last week, it was announced that the US, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay are exploring the possibility of launching a Pan-American Six Nations.
The Eagles qualified for this autumn’s World Cup by beating Uruguay over two legs last year. At the tournament Mike Tolkin’s men are drawn in Pool B with South Africa, Samoa, Scotland and Japan. Their first fixture is against the Samoans, at Brighton Community Stadium on 20 September.
