The United States experienced a supernova-like soccer frenzy created by the success of the national team in the FIFA World Cup last year. And a new summer of love could be in store for America in 2016 with another sport that has little resonance on its shores, but is significant around the world.
Rugby is on the verge of a potential boom in a country which has all the means to sustain it. Once viewed as the vegetarian substitute to American football’s meat, the sport could be in for a renaissance and recreate its identity in the US during the Rio 2016 Olympics.
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It’s far from a guarantee, but many of the pieces are in place. Both the USA Men’s and Women’s Eagles Sevens teams qualified for Rio by claiming the 2015 North America Caribbean Rugby Association (NACRA) Sevens Championship title over a week ago.
The men’s team ended the 2014-15 Sevens World Series with a defeat of Australia in the final in London to earn their first tournament title in May, securing sixth place in a field of 22 nations – their highest ever finish.
America’s 15-a-side squad will feature at September’s Rugby World Cup in England, but the Sevens format is where the nation have meteorically ascended and there’s no better arena to showcase in – from a US viewership perspective – than the Olympics.
The last time rugby was in the Olympics, then as the 15s version, was in 1924 when America earned gold. Even if history doesn’t repeat itself, just catching the country’s attention could make all the difference to the sport’s trajectory.
“Our national teams have started to improve and with Sevens now an Olympic sport, our young players have so many opportunities in rugby to play in World Cups and become Olympians,” CEO of USA Rugby Nigel Melville told Sport360.
While 15s remains the purest form of rugby, Sevens has enjoyed a rise in popularity. The variant has shorter matches with fewer players, which naturally creates more space on the field and leads to exciting, highlight-worthy action.
Sevens is also much less technical, meaning it’s easier to get into as both a player and a spectator.
For a nation like the US, which isn’t lacking explosive athletes, the learning curve isn’t as steep as 15s.
In fact, the largest annual rugby competition in North America has been the USA Sevens, held in Las Vegas every February since 2004, and in May, it was announced that the 2018 Rugby World Cup Sevens will be hosted in San Francisco.
Chad Hansen, president of New York Rugby Club (NYRC), told Sport360: “Everybody knew that Sevens was going to be the US’ gateway into rugby, because Sevens is very easy to understand. All the technical parts of rugby that people don’t get, basically don’t happen.”
NYRC, established in 1929, are the self-proclaimed oldest rugby club in the US and they field both men’s and women’s teams at various levels, ranging from Division 1 to their high school programme.
Hansen is a good representation of competitive rugby players in America. After playing soccer and basketball casually as a kid, he didn’t find the sport until he went to college. For many, college is the first place to experience rugby as part of either the school’s team or club, due to the lack of opportunities at youth and teen level relative to other mainstream sports.
God is good so good! My dream and our dream came true! We’re going to the Olympics!!
— Carlin Isles (@Carlin_Isles) June 14, 2015
The amount of opportunities, however, has started to change, causing rugby participation in the US to spike 81 per cent from 2008 to 2013, the biggest gain of any sport, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. It hasn’t just been at the college level either, with rugby also experiencing the sharpest growth in the six to 12-year-old age group with a 30.5 per cent increase.
“We started building our youth programs for six to 12-year-olds in 2008 with the introduction of Rookie Rugby, a non-contact game for boys and girls. Over two million youngsters participated in the program and now we are seeing great growth in our high schools and college programs,” Melville added.
Increasing participation is necessary to grow rugby but there are obstacles standing in its way to reach the heights of the NFL, NBA, MLB or NHL at the elite level and Hansen insists that’s the main problem for rugby in America.
“The biggest challenge essentially is that the US still doesn’t have a pathway for elite growth, for the most part. For example, in England, you can be a low-level semi-pro or pro player where it’s actually your job. There’s a gradient of how good you can be and that gives you opportunities and gives young people a chance to progress to the elite levels,” said the 30-year-old Hansen, who works as a software engineer at Google.
“In the US, it’s all or nothing. There’s no pro level really. You have to play completely amateur and have to have a day job, which is your priority. So it’s hard for us to produce elite players in that sense.”
The Sevens format is a workaround to the dilemma of developing young players and Eagles star Carlin Isles is proof. The 25-year-old full back is considered the fastest player in rugby, but he didn’t touch a rugby ball until the age of 22, more focused on the Olympic time trials in the 100 metres – 10.13 seconds his personal best – as recently as 2012.
Now, Isles will be a key contributor to the Eagles in Rio next year and his story, while atypical, does inspire hope that American athletes in other disciplines can cross over and taste success in Sevens.
Raising rugby’s profile is the next step to enticing those athletes and the Olympics could do just that.
“I guarantee in the next 10 years we’re top five in the world for 15s” – Hansen
The Rugby World Cup will draw the eyes of a certain segment of the American population, but the Olympics is a different beast.
The London 2012 Games was the most-watched television event in US history, with more than 219 million viewers tuning in, so the Eagles will have their audience.
“The Sevens in the Olympics is going to get pumped here a lot. On the cusp of that, everybody realises we need to start investing in rugby infrastructure,” Hansen said.
“If they can figure out how to parlay that immediately into something, it could just explode. If they don’t, then they’re going to be throwing a lot of opportunity away and have to build back up again.”
That doesn’t mean Sevens will replace 15s, even in the US. From a revenue standpoint – advertising, television rights, etc. – Sevens is a tougher sell because of its compact nature, according to Hansen.
Sevens alone can’t be the pillar holding up rugby in America and 15s will eventually have to follow. But by throwing their names into the ring to host the Rugby World Cup in either 2023 or 2027 they could do just that.
“You can’t have a ‘Monday Night Sevens’. You can have ‘Monday Night 15s’, that makes sense,” Hansen said, referring to the success of the NFL’s weekly Monday Night Football. “Sevens is the key to the notoriety but Sevens won’t be the money-maker.
“I have absolute confidence we’ll become a force in 15s and I guarantee in the next 10 years we’re top five in the world because Americans love sports, love athletes and love spending money on it.”
There’s plenty of work to be done before and after Rio, but an encouraging future could see America introduced to the sport again.
This time, rugby might just make the right first impression.
