Win over Russia to boost US rugby

Former President Bill Clinton played. So did George W Bush. And the United States are reigning Olympic champions.

Yet rugby for decades has remained in the margins of US sporting life, squeezed out by basketball, American football, baseball and ice hockey.

This year, however, more Americans are likely to watch rugby than ever before, thanks to coverage of the Rugby World Cup on NBC and Universal Sports. The US Eagles are playing some of their best rugby ever, beating Russia 13-6 in a hard-fought match, five days after putting in an enormous defensive effort in a loss to Ireland.

The Eagles are narrowing the gap between themselves and the top teams from Europe, South Africa and the Pacific.

But the real growth in the sport is happening in America’s high schools and colleges.

“It’s absolutely growing, it’s the fastest growing team sport in the country,” said Todd Clever, the charismatic long-haired leader of the US World Cup squad in New Zealand.

Clever, who has earned the nickname “Captain America”, was citing a recent study by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association that found growth in rugby outpaced soccer, lacrosse, ice hockey and all other team sports in the US between 2007 and 2009.

In the association’s 2011 update, rugby was pipped by lacrosse, but participation in rugby among all people aged six years and older continued to grow at just over 20 per cent annually.

Clever said good press and increasing coverage of rugby sevens competitions – a sport that will be included in the 2016 Olympics – have helped.

The 26-year-old Phil Thiel, another player on the Eagles team, said that in his home state of Michigan, there were six club teams for high school players when he began playing the sport – and now there are 64.

“A lot more people are getting exposed to the game,” he said.

America has a surprising legacy of back-to-back gold medals in Olympics rugby before the 15-a-side version ceased to be an Olympic event after the 1924 Games. That’s due more to the sport being barely contested in the Olympics at that time than anything else. As for the former presidents, both played social rugby while students at college.

Indeed, rugby perhaps has its strongest tradition in American colleges as a game that’s not taken too seriously by the participants and is followed quickly by plenty of beer. For some athletes who can’t make it to the top in American football, it provides an alternative sport with vigorous contact.

The image of US rugby as a purely social pastime is changing, however.

“One hundred per cent it has changed since I started,” said Chan Borland, 58, from San Diego, who made the trip to New Zealand to follow the Eagles. “It’s much more serious and less social. There’s championships organised, and divisions.”

Borland started playing at San Diego State University. Like many who play, he found a community for life.

After college, he played for the alumni team, the Old Aztecs. Then came the Ancient Aztecs. He’s still playing for a “Golden Oldies” team – with some of the same players he’s known all these decades.

Rugby’s history in Russia is much more recent. The team is playing in its first World Cup – something that was considered such a big deal that a billionaire, a beauty queen and even the deputy prime minister, Alexander Zhukov, came to New Plymouth on the west coast of New Zealand’s north island to watch. Zhukov was quick to dismiss the Cold War storyline that the local media was promoting for the clash.

“Now, the American sportsmen are friends of the Russian sportsmen,” Zhukov said. “There is no more time of Cold War.”

But perhaps Thursday’s win for the Eagles – just the third in six World Cup tournaments, and the first since 2003 – will signal its time for US rugby to come in from the cold.

“We are building a fan base, and that’s really great,” Clever said after the game. “And hopefully we can continue that, and keep our good performances coming, and hopefully the sport will grow.”