America might be a big country but American rugby is still a small world. It can seem that everyone in the game knows each other, from billionaires to White House advisers and down.
Chris Dunlavey and Paul Sheehy may be the exceptions that prove the rule. Dunlavey is a stalwart of the Washington Irish club, Sheehy played for Washington. Both are well connected in a very political town but somehow, until a couple of summers ago, they had never managed to meet.
“I think we were on the pitch together once or twice,” Dunlavey said, one recent afternoon in his office on Connecticut Avenue. “But back in the day his club beat the hell out of mine so bad we didn’t spend a lot of time hanging out.”
Dunlavey, who still plays, is a partner in a leading programme management firm. Sheehy, who played for the USA at the 1991 World Cup, is a successful car dealer who was linked to Pro14 ambitions in the city. In June 2018, when Wales played South Africa at RFK Stadium, the two men were introduced.
Soon they were partners in Old Glory DC, the Major League Rugby team which will make its debut in New Orleans on Saturday.
“We think we’re exactly 10 days from being ready to go,” Dunlavey said, 10 days out from kick-off and joined by head coach Andrew Douglas, a Kiwi out of Waikato, and operations manager John Manson, over from Glasgow Warriors and the Scottish Rugby Union, which holds a minority stake.
“We did have the good fortune of having done an exhibition season last spring [which] was a nice test run for everything, ranging from what Andrew’s doing, putting the team together and coaching it, to how we’re putting together our gameday plan for operations.
“I think we were able to take some lessons learned into the new season, and be as ready as we can be.”
The support of local clubs has been sought and warm-up games won. But in a league rapidly finding its feet, Old Glory, like the New England Free Jacks and Rugby ATL, based in Atlanta, will not have long to get up to speed.
There will be 16 regular-season games before the knockout playoffs. In another echo of the NFL, MLR’s 12 teams are now split into regional conferences. In the way of things in a vast country where the Dallas Cowboys somehow play in the NFC East, the NOLA Gold, more than 1,000 miles away, count as local rivals.
Seattle Seawolves, nearly 3,000 miles distant and daunting double champions, must fly in for DC’s home opener on 16 February but Douglas and Manson insist their players will relish their own flights to San Diego, Houston, Austin and Toronto. Elsewhere in the rugby world, such places seem exotic.
Old Glory’s overseas hires are seasoned pros and among them looms Tendai Mtawarira, a world champion Springbok prop. The Beast has been delayed at home but according to Douglas: “He’s always in great shape physically, even with the Sharks, he’ll only do one week of preseason and he’ll play Super Rugby. So I’m pretty sure he can do one week here and play MLR.
“He’s training hard, he’s been in touch with us, he’s sending us videos. He rang me yesterday, excited, he just wants to get here and he wants that visa in his hand. And so I think if he’s ready and he tells me he wants to play, he’ll play.”
As the England front row will attest while shuddering over memories of the World Cup final in Yokohama, Mtawarira can really play. Nonetheless, some around MLR have questioned whether Old Glory’s local hires can fully back him up.
“Part of the reason I’m involved in the whole thing,” Dunlavey said, “was that I’m a DC native and it’s just always been a great rich rugby community here with a lot of good clubs, with a lot of tradition. Recently, there have not been as many national contending top clubs as there was … but there’s still a pretty rich culture.”
Old Glory have invested in that culture: their captain is Josh Brown, a firefighter and paramedic as well as a back-rower out of Rocky Gorge, a club from Columbia, Maryland.
Over the phone the next day, before a dash back up the Acela corridor to New York – a train route that has a day of presidential primaries named after it, no less – Sheehy enthused about carving a place for rugby in DC.
“Andrew Douglas did a great thing,” he said. “He had a training day where the players had to run to all the memorials on the Mall and around the Basin and learn a little bit. Of course Old Glory’s hanging at one of the museums too.”
That’s a reference to a Star-Spangled Banner at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Next to history, Washington’s other bedrock is politics. Sheehy aims to buy into it whole.
When we speak, I’ve just interviewed a former presidential candidate, Martin O’Malley, about the Iowa caucuses. As it happens, like Sheehy the former Maryland governor is a graduate of Gonzaga, a Jesuit powerhouse of US schools rugby.
“We’ll be getting him to a game,” Sheehy said. “His Lieutenant Governor, Anthony Brown, is now a congressman. I’m going to be inviting him. [Former Virginia governor] Terry McAuliffe, I want to invite him to a game.
“I just mentioned some Democrats. I want to invite Congressman Richard Hudson, who’s part of the Rugby Caucus, a Republican [from North Carolina]. Alex Mooney of West Virginia too.”
Dunlavey has vast experience in helping build big venues, Nationals Park and Audi Field among them. Old Glory will start at Cardinal Stadium, a 3,500-seater at Catholic University. If Sheehy’s vision comes true, the bleachers might be dotted with half of Congress.
“In all seriousness,” he said, “let’s get together for rugby. Rugby can connect these people. It’s been part of living in DC my whole life and boy, it’d be nice if we really had a caucus that believed in the connection beyond politics.
“Just like we do on rugby, go out there and beat each other up. That’s fine, but get together and talk afterwards, right?”
As it turns out, Mtawarira will be living in the surrounds of Kalorama, an upscale neighbourhood, home to half the DC elite. Sheehy didn’t mention invites for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump but he said: “Man, if I could get Obama, that would really be something. I got to tell ya, Tendai happens to know a very big supporter of the Obamas. Through that channel I said, ‘Look, anything you could do...’
“Because we do want to activate DC public schools in rugby again. That’s another mission. I was just on the other line with [player pathways manager] Tim Brown, talking about how we got to take that Play Rugby USA model. While we’re doing some good work, we’ve got to make it sustainable. That’s our long-term goal with Old Glory, is to raise the level of rugby in the DC community.
“For me, all these things are coming together.”
