I know this section of BS doesn't see a whole lot of action, but I thought there could be a thread for the US team for the summer. They're kicking off a pretty busy and competitive schedule this afternoon. Now that the US and Canada are included in the Pacific Nations Cup, they'll be seeing a few more meaningful matches each year, which has been badly needed. Here's the schedule for the Eagles this summer: May 25th, @ Canada, 4pm (Pacific Nations Cup) Stream: http://www.irb.com/live/video.html June 8th, vs. Ireland @ Houston June 14th vs. Tonga @ Carson, CA (PNC) June 19th vs Fiji @ Japan (PNC) June 23rd @ Japan (PNC) August 17th vs Canada @ Charleston, SC (World Cup Qualifier) August 24th @ Canada in Toronto (WCQ) They haven't said much about TV/streaming for the rest of the matches, but I'm sure something will be available. Anyhow, if anyone wants to add info and discuss the summer schedule, there's got to be a few rugby fans here. I honestly don't know much about the game as I'm just starting to get into it, but I'm going to be catching the game this afternoon.
They're looking pretty good so far today though, they're putting Canada under loads of pressure, even though I don't think he's grounded this. (edit; yeah, I cursed it for you)
Canada has a far superior domestic system than the U.S. Everyone in their country that's decent has to move to Vancouver to play in an 8-team league. That and they have a regional championship between B.C., the Prairies, Ontario, and the Atlantic. The U.S. got rid of their regional tournament in 2006. Problem with the U.S. game is there is too much infighting and no cohesive national strategy because the union tries to be all things to all people. Our overseas players that play for big name outfits when they come to the U.S. just don't perform. Takudzwa Ngwenya ought to be able to run circles around the Canadian wingers and yet he is always simply neutralized. I've yet to see Samu Manoa play a solid game for the U.S. although he's a key component of Northampton. Wyles is a good fullback for Saracens but he's not a kicker and fullback isn't as involved in the play. Meanwhile, Paul Emerick's injury-forced retirement left a huge hole in our backline. We don't have an all that good scrum half and we've had a hole at fly half since Mike Hercus' retirement in 2009. Our props are always a compromise and we're still forced to pick Eric Fry although it looks like we may finally have some youth coming up here. But Canada always beats us not just because we suck, but because they're just simply better than us at this point and have left us behind.
One thing that has kind of irked me in the last couple years is that it seems like they are more worried about promoting their exhibition schedule more than the actual matches that matter.
They won't. We're organizationally ahead of Uruguay and they'll be missing their best player, Rodrigo Capo Ortega of Castres. Uruguay do some dirty tricks at their field. Their stereotype is they have a solid forward pack but their backs are horrendous, so down at their field in Montevideo it's incredibly narrow. When we play them up here we'll at least be able to spread the ball out more. Still, we won the Rugby World Cup qualifier games in Montevideo for 2007 and 2011. USA Rugby would love to be the USSF. The USSF has sponsors and a professional league and money. What do you mean? It's only been in the past couple years that people have started buying tickets to watch rugby here. They've done a good deal with the Houston Dynamo stadium, selling games against Italy in 2012 and Ireland A last year, and New Zealand Maori in Philadelphia. This coming June we'll play Scotland in Houston. And based on ticket sales, the people that go to rugby matches are buying for Tier 1 countries coming over (countries in Six Nations or The Rugby Championship) as either full or 2nd-string sides, not Tier 2 (U.S., Canada, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, Japan, Romania, Georgia) or Tier 3 (Uruguay for example). We played Tonga last year at the Galaxy's stadium in Carson and the only people that showed up were Tongan expats. The "exhibition" vs. "matches that matter" distinction does not really exist in rugby like it does in soccer. From that standpoint, the U.S. has only had 2 matches since the 2011 Rugby World Cup that have "mattered": the RWCQs against Canada. Playing against the Maori is more important because 1.) the Maori are a far superior opponent, 2.) people buy tickets to watch the Maori while Canada in an RWCQ in Charleston gets maybe 4000, and 3.) we're making the World Cup anyway, even if we miraculously lose to Uruguay in this Americas qualifier we're ahead of the other repechage teams. We always defeat Russia who look to be the European team, and the other two are plausibly Hong Kong and Zimbabwe, who we're not losing to. Nigel Melville, who has ran USA Rugby since it went bankrupt in 2006 as mostly the IRB's representative, has been in London recently to talk about setting up a new competition between the U.S., Canada, and by far the two best European non-Six Nations teams at the moment: Romania and Georgia. This setup is popular amongst rugby fan forum circles but I'm not too keen because I don't see people buying tickets to watch Romania and Georgia. My complaints about the union are more in regard to how they run the domestic game. The national teams are treated like they're the only things that matter (I blame that on my belief that Melville is there to represent the IRB instead of growing the game domestically, I can explain that in another post if anyone wants), so college rugby which has the largest commercial potential has threatened secession from the national body for some years now, the best domestic clubs want to secede, and the youths it's a bit whatever as they're normally ran on a state-based level and you have here a national union. There's a lack of leadership to make decisions and carry them out across the game because Melville and company don't want to neuter themselves. It's a bit herding cats though because everyone has a different thought on things. For example, the east coast college teams want a fall-based championship to better fall in line with their weather, the western college teams which are the best ones instead want a spring-based championship. USA Rugby don't have the power of say the NCAA to put their fist down saying "you will play this time of year or you won't play at all", you think NCAA baseball teams in the northeast want to have a spring season? So you have multiple college national championships, some sanctioned by USA Rugby, some not. Clubs are pretty much going toward the same path.
Here's the RWC qualifiers for people here to watch if they so desire: http://www.irb.com/live/video.html March 22nd: United States @ Uruguay in Montevideo, will be streamed at irb.com March 29th: Uruguay @ United States in Kennesaw, Ga., kickoff at 3pm, will be streamed at irb.com and televised on Universal Sports
They're Tests, not Exhibitions. It's an entirely different mindset due to the history of the sport - they're the real thing as much as qualifiers. Are they underhyping the Pacific Nations Cup? Sure. But the IRB do a horrendous job of running that tournament; If I were in their position I'd not want to hype it until it was run properly. Which unfortunately given the way rugby is run will be never. The problem with the way things are run is that everything is a chicken and egg scenario, really. I'd be interested to hear it. Looking in from the outside, it doesn't look like any conspiracy so much as the "get the international stuff working and the rest will follow" attitude being a result of Melville being from England, so perhaps taking a traditionalist viewpoint and oversimplifying any lessons to be learnt from football in the '90s? The IRB are a joke. At least FIFA's brazen moneygrabbing gives them a reason to actually develop the game rather than just sit back in their own little world and play at being shitty politicians all day.
I just say that because we are consigned to having to face them every time to get in the show. Boo-urns.
Why would he be going against the IRB's main second tier tournament to try and go get games against quality opposition that aren't favoured politically if he were a lackey? Sure, it wouldn't be a money-spinner like games against tier-1 sides but it makes sense given the ineptitude with which the PNC has been handled and the absurd way that Georgia and Romania are kept quiet. The IRB don't want those teams to get good exposure; if they play against the USA and Canada and get strong wins then it puts pressure on the 6 Nations structure and the IRB will do anything to avoid that. Or do you think they want to use games against the US as a bargaining chip to stop them pushing for games against 6N opposition?
Here's the link the the first leg against Uruguay, it's nearly halftime. http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/home/news/newsid=2070703.html It has been ugly, ugh.
The thing that got me was that when they played to their strengths and Uruguay's weaknesses, they tore through them like butter - but that was just for 15 minutes of the second half. The rest of the time they just got so flat, passed to players who were hardly moving and tried to steamroller forward against a team who were set up to deal with that. Once they started running at the Uruguayans at pace they started finding the gaps, but the first half especially was just turgid and once they took the lead they went right back to playing like that.
Play to strengths and Uruguay's weaknesses. If they can do that for the full 80, they're back in business. If they don't get that done on Saturday at Kennessaw, I'll get the hearse ready.
If they lose to Uruguay, Tolkin is getting fired most likely. Pretty horrible game from the U.S. Uruguay in contrast I thought were excellent. Outside of the 20 minutes around halftime, they were successful in slowing the game down to their speed.
I didn't watch any of the games because I don't have cable, however, I followed the game on twitter feeds from USA Rugby and even though the US won easily, the final score doesn't seem to indicate how tough the home game was. USA was losing with ~25 minutes to go IIRC. I do not really feel confident with the Eagles going against S. Africa, Samoa, Scotland, and, most likely, Japan. I actually do not see any game being really close. Canada has improved greatly over the last few years and the US has stood still, or maybe even regressed. I hope this NRFL combine this week will take off, we'll get the Independence Cup (and it'll be a success), and the first season of the NRFL really does start next Spring. The Eagles are really horrible right now and a pro league would help us elevate our level like we have in soccer.
The scoreline was definitely too flattering. There's really no business the game should've been in that state that late in the match, and with Uruguay missing their best player, a #8. What makes it worse is you've got the only rugby journalist in the country heaping masses of praise on the starting scrum half, who pretty much everyone in the small online American rugby community thinks should be dropped for another guy that plays better, but the scrum half (and fly half) played club rugby for the coach and said journalist has a guy heavily in his ear with ties to said club. I do hope Uruguay make the World Cup though after that performance, especially with Russia way down based on their form heading into 2011 RWC. The guy has made a lot of comments that make me believe this will be a massive failure. (For starters, he's entirely wrong on American soccer, read his comments about NASL and MLS, he thinks NASL was the success and MLS is the failure.) Yes, a pro league would definitely help us, but this guy thinks getting guys from college football that just weren't good enough for the NFL and turning them into scrum halves and props is the way to go. There are positions you can convert from other sports, but we do that already, and the positions you're likely to get, wings and backrows, we already have a ton of. Our problem positions are the ones that don't readily transfer from other sports: props (not from football anyway, please dear God go recruit high-level NCAA wrestlers, almost everyone in domestic U.S. rugby will tell you former amateur wrestlers as a general rule become better rugby players than people from any other sport), scrum half, and fly half. At the moment we're weak at center which has not normally been a problem, and there you can get some runningbacks that run strong into contact. I don't believe the guy wants to create a pro league, I think he just wants to be the agency conduit connecting American athletes to European rugby clubs and make money that way. Here's a list of clubs and players going to it per Rugby America. Only ones I know are Palamo, who very young played for the Eagles at the 2007 World Cup in a brief substitute role, then joined the football team at University of Utah. Yamon Figurs is a speedster in the Takudzwa Ngwenya/Carlin Isles mold. So he'll get a job with someone even if he can't catch the ball (which Ngwenya couldn't catch the ball and still got a job with Biarritz).
Really? I heard this interview from a day ago and it seemed to me that Robertson doesn't like soccer, which is fine and that he didn't think the original MLS model worked, i.e. through the Federation, as opposed to independently i.e. the other 4 major sports. We understand why MLS is doing it through US Soccer, but maybe he doesn't. Seeing the MLS' first few years and we know it almost folded if it wasn't for some billionaire's deep pockets, then I can see where he's coming from. However, if he thinks NASL was successful and the MLS is not successful now then he's delusional. If NFRL gets to be as big as MLS is today, then it will be a major success. Do you have a link for him saying that? I hope that's not the case. I'm of the believe that a pro rugby league would be very successful and profitable in the US within a decade. He could make a lot more money with a pro league. The US is in need of a pro league and I don't believe for a second a country as big as the US can't have more than 5 major pro leagues. Countries in Europe have 10 pro sports leagues. What we need to understand is that not everything will be as big as the big 4 (or 5 when MLS gets bigger) and scale it down salary wise and geographically as well. There's also GP Rugby (VIIs) who is trying to start up and the company (Grand Prix Entertainment) is trying to start a XVs league too with MLR. I have even less faith in them due to where they are and that they are promising pro VIIs, XVs, and men's and women's indoor volleyball leagues.I personally know 2 people that were excited for this idea and would go to games. I would go to games as well and would watch them on TV/Stream. I first watched rugby in 2011, during the WC and liked it, after that I saw highlights on youtube and some matches on beintv (when I had it) but not much else, a pro league here is needed. You seem to be a lot more knowledgeable in the sport than I am, so I will take your word for it. I do know that Clever said something that I kinda agree with, Rugby is a players game and Football is a coach's game where the player are chess pieces. Not everyone will make a good transition. Regarding wrestling, the best american wrestlers will choose MMA and big UFC money (Cormier, Henderson, Weidman, etc) or Olympic dream, sometimes with big money (Burroughs, Dake, Taylor). After wrestling got reinstated in the olympics, a couple of pro startup for wrestling (Victory Wrestling Challenge, Agon WC, and another couple IIRC that I hope succeed) in MMA format were formed which will hopefully give wrestlers post career options. After that they would go to rugby. US has a lot of great wrestlers, so that could be a good place to find athletes as well. Sorry for the rant, this is way OT, but once I start writing, sometimes this happens lol.
Yes, it's one of his main arguing points. It was argued here previously on the MLS forum. https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/...deal-indeed-mls-mentions-comparisons.1987331/