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Joined July 2019
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Checking in from the US, this is how it was- and in some ways still is- in this country as a fan of an MLS team. This could have been taken off BigSoccer.com in 2001, MatchNightInAmerica.com in 2009, or the AOL boards back in the ’90s.
We have soccer-specific stadiums in places previously unthinkable like Cincinnati, Nashville (a 30,000 seater!), outside of Salt Lake City, Columbus is in their second soccer stadium, Austin, and more. The league is bigger than ever before, taken “seriously” in more places than ever before (get off the plane in Orlando and there’s a Orlando City bar right there, for one), on TV more (and more often) than ever before….and the vast majority of soccer fans in this country do not follow it. The EPL, Liga MX, and Barca/RM fans (I won’t even say La Liga fans because let’s be honest, nobody follows anybody but those two) fans outnumber us probably 5 to 1 still.
Unfortunately the answer is simple if painful: time and money. I’ve followed Sydney FC since day 1 from up here (they were the first team in the league to sign an American- my criteria). I know how hard it is to get venues built, but that was what kicked things into high gear here. Sadly my local team is stuck, probably for as long as we have the same owners, in an NFL stadium but it’s night and day from when most MLS teams played in enormous NFL venues. Coopers Stadium in Adelaide should be replicated as much as possible in every market down there. Also, holy hell I thought it was bad NYCFC playing on a baseball field (awful sight lines, etc)- playing on a cricket oval might be worse.
Good luck, Aussie friends. Many of us here are rooting for you.
Barcelona's visit is the last resort for an A-League that has run out of ideas
It would be kind of funny of FIFA to tell Football Australia that in or before 2026, seeing as the WC that year is here is gonna be shared by my country (the States) where there’s no p/r, Canada (also none), and Mexico (who just “suspended” it- and where it will likely never return).
Where should the A-Leagues expand to next?
Come up here to the US, where the game is amateur and the administrators are somehow of an even lower level… 😂
Rugby League: Not sick - but not well
I call it “ice hockey” when I’m on forums in another country. I was born here, I went to a hockey school (Northeastern) and I’ve been going to Bruins games for 30 years.
Has international rugby league finally turned a corner?
Hockey wasn’t played or followed in the southern and southwestern United States at any level before the NHL expanded to places like Arizona, San Jose, Tampa Bay, Nashville, and Miami in the 1990s. Those teams were overwhelmingly, almost entirely, Canadian players. Now they’re entrenched in their communities, people have picked up hockey, and a kid from Arizona (Auston Matthews) is a star on the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Raptors came to Toronto in the 90s when basketball was barely on the radar up there, and with 100% American players. Now the Raptors are a staple and basketball is big.
Has international rugby league finally turned a corner?
North American sports fans don’t care where the players come from, this seems to be a particularly British issue. The Raptors had one Canadian on their team when they won the title, he was on the bench. Toronto FC had one Canadian on the field when they won their title. I’m from Boston- the Bruins entire retired numbers lineup is all Canadians and the captain of the team is Slovakian. The biggest Red Sox legend of the last 20 years is a Dominican. The only thing North American sports fan care about is winning, where you’re from originally is secondary or tertiary.
Has international rugby league finally turned a corner?
It’s really hard for us in North America to grasp actually. In ice hockey we scoffed a little at the addition of teams from the south and southwest (Florida, Arizona, Vegas) outside of our heartlands of that game but nothing like the animosity faced by TWP fans on social media (as a Day 1 fan, it’s been ah…wow).
Has international rugby league finally turned a corner?
As an American fan of the game since the start of the last decade, it’s been great to see things happen in North America like the Toronto Wolfpack and the very successful (relative to scale) launch of California Rugby League. The international game will definitely be a big part of how RL can grow here in the US- both from connecting to the large immigrant communities we have here and the USA Hawks getting better.
The success of the US Men’s and Women’s soccer teams in the last 20 years have definitely helped to fuel interest and expansion in MLS and now NWSL, for example. We’ll cheer for the US in anything, even if we don’t know the game well- the Olympics are the example. Rugby (of any kind) has almost no profile here in our mainstream sports culture but the Rugby 7s at the Olympics got a lot of attention. If the Hawks could mix it up at an RLWC without getting embarrassed like in 2017 (also yes I watched 2013 when didn’t suck, different media landscape here now with streaming).
If New York and Ottawa do end up coming in 2021, and the Hawks and Wolverines can improve, there is a hell of a lot of upside here in North America.
Has international rugby league finally turned a corner?
I know you’re joking but it’ll probably, if it ever happens, be along the lines of the name of the NRL- which works both ways (name of sport/collection of teams).
Where's the American Valentine Holmes?
99% percent of Americans don’t know there’s two kinds of rugby, “league” to us means “a collection of teams” so Major League Rugby is fine- a la Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball, Major League Lacrosse etc etc.
Where's the American Valentine Holmes?
Those combines are hardly publicized, and the Saracens are an amateur outfit. The Canadian Football League does their combines in the South almost every year, and promotes the hell out of them- as a result, they get decent talent. Washington isn’t a hotbed of college football, and nobody’s paying the price for a cross-country ticket to fly up there from Texas or Georgia.
Where's the American Valentine Holmes?
Come back to Twitter would you, you left us to fight the flatcappers on our own 😂
Rugby league dispatches from a heretic in exile
Really proud of my fellow Americans from Roots Rugby. The more American athletes we can get to play rugby league, the more surprised and impressed you folks are gonna be.
Although, kinda yikes one guy skipped the USARL GF to play in London (although I can’t say I blame him overall).
The real rugby league magic weekend
Rugby union is a miniscule niche sport that 99% of Americans have never seen played (I say this as someone who’s from a “heartland”- Massachusetts- and has been to dozens of club games and supported London Irish for years now).
The “difference” rugby league offers is it’s very similar to our football, it’s fast, it’s not played at the same time as our football, and it’s easy to pick up. The old Spike TV network (now the Paramount Network) showed the NRL playoffs here back in 2009 and sitting in bars in Boston (I was much younger then haha) people would go “ohhhhhhhhhhhhh” at the hits and the speed. There was no follow up, the NRL never came here to play games, and the league is now on a channel (Fox Soccer Plus) that nobody gets, so it never went anywhere- but let me tell you you could sell rugby league to Americans if it was presented as a professional sport.
Is rugby league just behind bigger sports, or does it have additional hurdles?
Rugby union in colleges here did little to nothing to grow the game. The 2,000+ amateur clubs from coast to coast did nothing to grow the game, because they have no money and are basically recreational. Only the very recent development of having a “professional” (actually semi-pro) competition and getting games has done anything for rugby union in the US. This is not a grassroots nation, this is a top down nation. You put pro teams in, then kids want to play (look at the NHL in Arizona or Nashville).
Is rugby league just behind bigger sports, or does it have additional hurdles?
Rugby union did nothing for 100 years here except drink swimming pools of beer, which is fine but let’s not make it sound like some kind of juggernaut. The federation is a financial shambles, the college game isn’t governed by the NCAA but by said broke federation, national team games are hidden behind the Flo Rugby paywall so new fans aren’t watching and highlights don’t make SportsCenter thusly, the Sevens RWC was so poorly run it was downsized from two planned stadiums to one, and 7’s coach Mike Friday regularly bemoans the fact his players are on “poverty” wages. Clubs finally getting together and setting up a league themselves, Major League Rugby (which is basically semi-pro), is what’s finally gotten things rolling to a degree. Go check out Psalm Wooching’s Twitter for his (accurate) critiques of USAR’s shortcomings.
The highest attendance for a USA Rugby game not involving New Zealand was 2016 in New Jersey vs Ireland and it was reported at 22k (which, let me tell, was generous). Denver Test attendance was within touching distance of that, at 19k. If rugby league got it’s act together and put some professional teams here paying decent money it would leapfrog MLR. There’s room for both codes here in a nation of 320+M, but RU isn’t the giant it is other places.
Is rugby league just behind bigger sports, or does it have additional hurdles?
Nothing that happens in Hawaii makes any impact or gets any coverage in the continental US. If you want a team aimed at the Pacific and Australasian market in Hawaii, that’s fine- there’s a little over a million people there. But a team in Hawaii will not gain any traction or interest on the mainland. The NFL had the only thing going there, and it left.
How do you define "breakaway" in a sport that is itself a rebellion?
Nothing here comes from the grassroots, that’s a 19th Century idea. Major League Soccer, the last successful professional league launch here in this country, did not come from the grassroots. Soccer was “grassroots” in the Dark Ages of the game here (1940s-1990s) and didn’t grow at all until a top-down league was formed. Rugby union here has been “grassroots” for over a century and made no impact on our sports landscape until a professional league was formed with new teams.
This is a top-down country. You plop down teams in a professional league, and then growth underneath comes from there. The NHL expanded into non-traditional areas in the 1990s like Florida, Arizona, and Tennessee and now kids play the game there, not the other way around.
How do you define "breakaway" in a sport that is itself a rebellion?
The amount of people who know rugby (any kind of rugby) here is small. The amount who know there are two forms of rugby is smaller.
The reason USARL players have to self-fund is the same reason USA Cricket, USA Aussie Rules Football (yes it exists), and others have to- because there’s been nobody to put money into the game because nobody here knows what it is. USA Rugby (union) is barely solvent, and suffers from a host of monetary issues. Our sports, unlike those overseas, do not receive government funding.
US Soccer was in almost exactly the same place in the Dark Ages of the 60s, 70, 80s until businessmen put together a plan to host the 1994 World Cup and start a professional league. Now MLS is all over this country, the majority of its teams playing in purpose built stadiums. All it takes is someone willing to take a risk and invest money into the game here.
How do you define "breakaway" in a sport that is itself a rebellion?
Thanks for the reply Chris!
Just as aside, I’m almost positive I watched a game involving Western United on an oval last season- am I crazy?
Barcelona's visit is the last resort for an A-League that has run out of ideas