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Oh hey howdy partner and cowabunga dudes, the Rugby League World Cup is heating up and, wouldn’t you know it, the good old boys from the US of A have more than earned their stars and stripes.
They’ve gotten themselves a berth in the tournament’s quarter-finals and a likely showdown with Cup heavyweights Australia.
Yep, the game of thirteen a side, six down, no huddle iron man football is finally hitting the big time in the land of the free as Terry ‘ten toes’ Matterson and his men storm the pages of the New York Times and have Barack Obama clearing space in his schedule.
These are heady times indeed.
Even if they do lose their final pool match to Scotland, no longer will US rugby league have to live off its past glories of Greg Smith, Manfred Moore, breaking Willie Mason’s ankle in Philadelphia and throwing that outrageous forward pass at the Coca-Cola Sevens many moons ago.
They have now hit the big time, and surely any future Northern Hemisphere tours will need to clear space for a whirlwind 32 stop North American leg.
Well… yes, no and maybe.
The US Tomahawks’ presence at the World Cup is a bit like that of your cousin’s new girlfriend, the one he meet online in a retro video game chat room a week earlier, at your wedding.
A lot of people think they shouldn’t be there. Others just ignore their presence, with the only person taking any interest in them being your weird Uncle Chuck who latches on to anyone who comes within a five metre radius.
But I’ll be damned if chat room chick isn’t belle of the ball!
I must admit, I too was sceptical about the T-Hawks.
The infighting stateside in the lead-up to the Cup between the USARL and AMNRL had left an unpleasant, Natural Ice style bad taste in many rugby league fans’ mouths.
Then came the unveiling of the squads, which many felt excluded players plying their trade in the US in favour of those playing in lower leagues overseas and qualifying via heritage rules.
Somehow the current squad of US players, cobbled together from everywhere from Cudgen to Connecticut to Hawaii, and with their third head coach in twelve months, has given American rugby league something it has never been able to capture.
Respect.
For a long, long time USA rugby league has been viewed in the same light as the Equatorial Guinea Olympic swimming program.
Despite the hard work of many in the country, it was doomed to fall into the ‘Wacky’ highlights category, which included this World Cup where the organisers had failed to make accommodation contingency plans for the US past their third pool match.
In short, they were meant to turn up, wear the funny Uncle Sam hat, let Wales win their pool and go home.
Now they’ve got NRL clubs scouting their players, the Wiggles writing songs about them and a likely quarter-final against Australia.
Granted, a US win against the Kangaroos would make the ‘Miracle on Ice’ look like beating your 96-year-old Nanna in totem tennis.
But still, what a moment? And what better way to cap off their belated cup appearance?
Recently I read about the famous song ‘Yankee Doodle’, and how it was actually penned by a British physician to make fun of the US soldiers with whom Britain was fighting with in the French and Indian Wars.
The American soldiers were mocked for being ‘above their station,’ as they dared to think themselves the equal of one of the world’s most powerful armies despite being a largely rag tag militia of men chucked together and using third-rate equipment.
Sounds awfully familiar doesn’t it?
And we all know how that one finished for the world’s most powerful army…
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