That the USA is the sleeping giant of rugby union has come to be something of a cliche. But events in Montevideo and Las Vegas this weekend suggest there is life in the old phrase yet. If the deciding game of the Americas Rugby Championship or finals day at the USA Sevens did not jolt the ogre fully awake, it seemed at least to give it a start.
In Montevideo, America’s men beat Uruguay 61-19 to seal a grand slam and a second successive tournament title in the ARC, the six-nation event also involving Canada, Brazil, Chile and an Argentina XV (essentially a third-string Pumas side but no mugs whatsoever of course).
In Vegas, the Eagles’ men beat England in the quarters, took out the Olympic champions, Fiji, in the semi-final and then shuttered Argentina 28-0 to win their second ever tournament title and their first at home. They are sixth on the World Series table.
The US women are also progressing but it is a member of the men’s sevens squad who both embodies both newfound American success and another cliché of covering the American game.
Perry Baker is a fascinating character, a college wide receiver with a tragic childhood tale to tell who briefly signed with the Philadelphia Eagles before an injury sent him to the Arena Football wilderness. But he picked up rugby, the sevens programme at the Olympic Training Center in California found him and now he’s World Rugby’s sevens player of the year.
Against Fiji on Sunday he showed why, scoring a try to rival anything from the history of the global game – a sevens wonder of the world, if you like.
Fed the ball on his own line, pinned in by three Fijians, the slim wing stepped, staggered, made his markers look drunk then exploded up the field for a sprinting, sizzling, ears-back 100m marvel.
Cue the cliché: if that’s a second-division football player who never made the NFL, imagine what the USA could do with a whole squad of converted college talent, whether at their own Sevens World Cup, in San Francisco in July, or at 15-a-side in Japan in 2019 or after.
Imagine it if you want. Crossover athletes do exist, from Carlin Isles to the rugby-raised Chicago Bears fullback-turned-Eagles centre Paul Lasike. But to obsess about such players is to do a disservice to American rugby, which is much more widespread, dedicated and passionate than most foreign observers could know.
Baker himself found the game through a magnificently named club in Florida, the Daytona Beach Coconuts. Thousands of club, school and college teams like them train and play and live for rugby through fall and spring and summer. Likewise Naya Tapper, the US women’s sevens strike runner, ran track at college but wasn’t a star before dropping it to play rugby with her friends.
Rugby union in the US is fundamentally a grassroots game. A new pro league is due next month but it is knitted to club redoubts – Houston, Utah, southern California, next year New York and Dallas.
Major League Rugby, each of its seven teams containing a Baker’s dozen of potential stars, will be fascinating to watch and cover. It will also need to be handled with care.
PRO Rugby, its predecessor, lasted one season in 2016 before collapsing in regret and acrimony. Its owner may yet sue; all may become clear once MLR kicks off. And despite unprecedented success on the international field – Canada were hit for 50 in World Cup qualifying last year – USA Rugby, the national governing body, is in a parlous position off it. There are rumours of imminent ructions, political as well as financial.
If five years getting to know the American game – and a gloriously happy trawl through the archives of Rugby Today magazine – is any guide, it was ever thus. Now, with foreign interests seeking to make a buck (and, some of them, help the locals out) it is only more so.
On 2 June, Wales will play South Africa at RFK Stadium in Washington DC. All power to the WRU and SARU, Rugby International Marketing and all who pay to see it. But on the same day, the Collegiate Rugby Championship will be taking place in Pennsylvania.
The CRC is a sevens event, usually won by Cal Berkeley but featuring other powers such as Army, Navy, Saint Mary’s, Dartmouth and the up-and-coming Kutztown. It attracts crowds. It’s hard to escape the feeling that many of the fans now working on their hangovers in Vegas – men and women who play for or run a team and pay to fly in for the sevens – will pick the CRC over a Test in DC.
America first? It’s a loaded phrase these days, a cliche turned malign. But Baker’s display in Vegas – and those of Danny Barrett, Ben Pinkelman, Folau Niua and the other sevens stars – like those of coach Gary Gold’s team in Uruguay, prove that in rugby at least it’s true.
If the sleeping giant is really going to wake, it must do so in its own way and its own time. If this weekend’s startling success can be built on – and it will be a stiff challenge – that time could yet be nigh.
