Before the Rugby World Cup began, I held out hope that the USA Eagles might actually have a shot at beating the island nations they would face in Pool A. Their early performance against England gave me a little hope that they could finish 3rd and qualify automatically for 2011.
Silly me. The Eagles followed up a 25-15 loss to Tonga two weeks ago with a 25-21 loss to Samoa yesterday. Only South Africa remains on the USA’s schedule, and even if the Springboks put their B team out there — which they’re expected to do, since they’ve already won Pool A — they should handle the Eagles fairly easily.
All it shows, really, is that America just isn’t ready to embrace a third football code. It barely embraces Association football as it is; our obsession with the gridiron is just that great. If our own football game weren’t an ancestor of rugby, we might put a little more effort into rugby, but in the end, there are too many similarities between the two codes to get Americans to care. The fact that rugby is proving to be the Southern Hemisphere’s game doesn’t help matters any.
For those of you that care, though, there are a few pretty interesting fixtures left to determine who will qualify for the knockout stage. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have already won their pools and advanced. Here’s a quick look at what’s left:
Pool A
Friday, 9/28: England v. Tonga
(Winner gets Australia in the knockout stage)
Pool B
Saturday, 9/29: Wales v. Fiji
(Winner gets South Africa in the knockout stage)
Pool C
Saturday, 9/29: Scotland v. Italy
(Winner gets Pool D champ in the knockout stage)
Pool D
Sunday, 9/30: Argentina v. Ireland, France v. Georgia
(If Argentina wins and/or gets a bonus point for scoring three tries, they win the pool, and France will face New Zealand in the knockout stage. If Ireland and France win and France gets the bonus point and Argentina doesn’t get a bonus, then France wins the pool and Argentina gets New Zealand. Got all that?)
4 responses so far ↓
1 Matt // Sep 27, 2007 at 11:32 am
A harsh analysis! USA Rugby has performed admirably considering the pool they are in had no true “minnow” nations. Tonga and Samoa aren’t exactly minnows, and the US sure would have loved to have Portugal and Georgia on the map as opposed to those established rugby nations (financial woes aside). And the England game…I still have a smile on my face.
I’m proud of the boys, and I hope those deserving of contracts get them out of this affair (Zee, Clever, Stanfill). Sure they get the wooden spoon, but they did it in a pool where there were no easy W’s, and in a bizarre way I think they have proven that they can in fact comepete. Except for that whole “no wins” part.
2 DJLitten // Sep 27, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Rugby will continue to grow in the US, slowly but surely. For instance, the first U-17 wasn’t established until this year, meaning national-type players weren’t identified until they were nearly in college. As more and more grade school and high school teams and leagues sprout up, so does the level of rugby.
It’ll take time, but worth it.
3 a different Dave // Sep 27, 2007 at 10:05 pm
The England game simply showed how poorly England were playing at that moment. The USA results against Tonga and Samoa are more typical and are what we should have expected.
As for growing the game in the USA, DJLitten is correct. The more that USA rugby can develop youth players, the better. But that’s a very long road, and not easy. As a soccer player I’ve experienced the institutional resistance to my sport over the past forty years in the USA. I can only imagine the situation is even worse for rugby.
What would be nice is if the Eagles could get a bit more media exposure in the USA. How often do they get to play serious test matches, apart from the World Cup and regional WC qualifying? It would be nice if we had some equivalent to the Six Nations. There really aren’t any nations in our region besides Canada who at our level. But if we look for instance to Japan and Korea we see two countries, relatively close by, who are at or maybe a bit below the level of the USA and Canada; maybe someone could find a corporate sponsor and have a “Four Nations” championship every year involving the USA, Canada, Japan, and Korea. It would help improve rugby a lot in all four countries and create some much needed media exposure.
Anyway that’s what I’d be thinking about if I were running rugby in any of those four countries. Maybe other countries could be considered as well, but mostly they seem to be either too far away (from the USA), or too far above or below our talent level, or else have their own regional competitions already.
4 Speech // Nov 7, 2007 at 5:33 am
Fuck USA Rugby. South Africa will always demolish you.