Can a Single USA Rugby Team in MLR Elevate USAR to New Heights?
For a few years now I’ve been having a conversation with anyone willing to listen to me (so yeah I’ve been talking to myself) about having a domestic competition with national team players spread out amongst the teams, or having just one team filled mostly by national team players competing in a competition as a way to develop a national team. Both have strengths and weaknesses, and both have examples of success to point to but which way should USA Rugby be leaning? There are also examples of failures for both, and now we will have an example of a happy middle ground. More on that later though.
Now there may be a few people reading this and thinking, “What the hell is he talking about a single team competing in a competition? That doesn’t make any sense.” Well, if we travel down to South America we’ll find a perfect example. Super Rugby Americas (SAR) was established in 2023 (replacing the Sùper Liga Americana de Rugby which had it’s first full season in 2021) and is a rugby union competition involving professional teams from Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. Each country has one team (except for Argentina who is just about to add their third team replacing the sole US team that was in the competition) with each team being filled mostly with the national team of that nation. It was created in conjunction with World Rugby. This allows their players to play a large number of matches together year on year all while building chemistry, cohesion, continuity basically all the “c” words that lead to a successful national team.
This is by far the number one reason (along with the Chilean and Uruguayan rugby unions signing players to central contracts which allowed said players to move to one area so they could train together as a team year-round) why we’ve seen such growth in our South American rivals. People who were not paying attention were shocked when Uruguay (Oct. 9th, 2021) and Chile (July 16th, 2022) beat the US to qualify for the 2023 Rugby World Cup. There were social media comments flying around everywhere about how the US has fallen off as if everyone had forgotten that Uruguay beat Fiji in the 2019 Rugby World Cup, and probably would’ve had a real chance at knocking off Georgia as well, if they didn’t spend a week celebrating their win over Fiji.
What’s that I hear from the rumblings? One South American competition doesn’t prove anything? Alright, let’s take a look at Rugby Europe Super Cup. It’s first season started in September 2021 and was created in conjunction with World Rugby. The competition, this year, was comprised of teams from Spain, Georgia, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania, Netherlands, and Belgium. Again, each team was mostly made up of national team players from their respective countries.
November 18th, 2022 brought another shock to the uninformed when Portugal tied the US to qualify for the 2023 Rugby World Cup instead of the US… Which is just dumb. How can a team qualify/get disqualified for a World Cup off a tie? What, never heard of overtime?! I mean come the f… I digress. Portugal has come a long way in a short amount of time thanks to this competition (and the regular international fixtures they get to play in the Rugby Europe Championship), and to combat those still saying the US has just fallen off, Portugal tied Georgia and beat Fiji in the 2023 Rugby World Cup. This is the same Georgian team that is trying to get into the Six Nations, and the same Fijian team that beat Australia, should have beaten Wales and should have beaten England in the same World Cup.
Is that more rumblings I hear out there? “Ok but what if you don’t have a bunch of small countries surrounding yours to fill out a competition like in Europe or South America?” you ask. Well let’s take a closer look at this Fiji side that I keep comparing teams to. With funding from World Rugby, the Fijian Drua was added to Australia’s National Rugby Championship (NRC) in 2017, and then was added to Super Rugby Pacific in February of 2022… I’m beginning to see a pattern… Super names aside, this was groundbreaking. Ever since the game went professional in 1995 Pacific Island players had to travel all around the world in order to make a living playing rugby, now they could make that living all while staying home! All those “c” words could finally be achieved by a Fijian team that would struggle to find the time or money to bring all of it’s players together before they were to play test matches.
Since the establishment of the Drua, Fiji has recorded the famous victory over Australia, was one fluke dropped ball away from also beating Wales in the 2023 Rugby World Cup, and even though they lost to England in the World Cup quarterfinals, they did beat England for the first time as a lead up to the World Cup. Now that the Drua is setting up a development academy to create a clear pathway from local youth to professional to the international side, I wouldn’t be surprised to find them in the semis or even in the finals of a World Cup. That is of course if the Fijian Rugby Union can stop being involved in all of these financial scandals.
These are all great success stories, but not all stories are tracking to have happy endings. Brazil used to be ranked higher and was routinely beating Chile before their new competition. Even though both field teams mostly made up of national team players Chile has surpassed Brazil. The same can be said of Romania and Portugal. Romania used to be the second-best team in Rugby Europe (behind Georgia) but now Portugal and Spain have both surpassed them even though all three field teams mostly made up of national team players.
I can already see the future comments pointing out that these are all small nations with small populations and that model is completely unfeasible in a country the size of the US or Canada. To that I say, yup. I mean we could do something similar to Fiji and enter a team made up of mostly Eagles (the US national team) and put them in the United Rugby Championship (URC) or the Top 14 or the Gallagher Premiership. We could even put in like three to five teams of only American players into the SAR competition, but really I don’t know how well either of those two options would appeal to the general sporting audience here in the US. They are such different models than what we’re accustomed to, and all of these competitions and teams are still pretty reliant on World Rugby funding. I’m not saying outside investors couldn’t be brought in, but I think the strange model wouldn’t help to bring them in.
I do believe a sports league like Major League Rugby (MLR) has the correct competition model to attract investors and eventually break into the sporting landscape of the US. Plus it allows for a larger overall talent pool of players to pick from. The downside is that you don’t have your core group of players playing and practicing together on a regular basis. England (Gallagher Premiership), France (Top 14), or even Japan (Japan Rugby League One) are able to get away with having national team players spread out across 10-14 teams because their countries are small enough that the national team players can quickly and easily assemble for routine camps throughout the year to maintain all those “c” words. That is not feasible in any way with a country the size of the US (plus it doesn’t help that USA Rugby doesn’t have the money to even host regular training camps, let alone afford to fly everyone to one location for said camps).
It seemed as if the US was doomed to be stuck in this weird space where players were now playing professionally (and definitely improving their individual skill), but lacking all those “c” words that would bring international success against the smaller nations who are improving faster. That was until the beginning of the 2024 MLR season when World Rugby stepped in to help fund a new franchise in for the competition focusing on developing US talent, Anthem Rugby Carolina… Well, at least they didn’t put the word super in the name.
According to Scott Lawrence (the US National Team head coach/GM) in a recent interview on MLR Weekly, the goal of the Anthem for the 2025 season is to have as many Eagles players as feasibly possible to, you know, gain all those “c” words I keep going on about. Don’t take my word for it, Sam Golla and Mitch Wilson seem to also think it’s a good idea in their interviews. This will truly be a happy middle ground. There is still a traditional sports league format, with teams spanning across the US, that investors and the general sporting audience can understand. Also allowing for that larger talent pool to get developed, and now with one team having, what could be, a core group of the current Eagles squad getting more time together. Just because they play for the Anthem doesn’t necessarily mean that Another player on a different MLR team can’t get called up to replace them on the national team if that non-Anthem player outperformed the Anthem player. Plus, there will be other current Eagles players spread out across the other MLR teams.
Is it going to be the same as what Chile, Uruguay, or Portugal are doing? No, there probably won’t be a vast majority of Eagles players on the Anthem, but there will, probably, be a strong core of players either on the current Eagles team or in the greater training squad. In the end, is this going to solve all the US’s problems and make them world beaters? Probably not, but I do believe this is most likely the best solution to the US’s problem with not getting enough time together. After all, a happy middle ground is usually the best place to end up.
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