Argentina makes more RWC sense than USA
There is a very good reason why rugby’s dollar-desperate establishment has failed to secure a place for the game in America’s sporting consciousness over the last quarter of a century – the same reason that stops the Dallas Cowboys, together with their shoulder pads, travelling to matches in the back seat of a single Ford Focus.
Even in a country as vast as the USA, there is only so much space available. If there’s no space, there is no visibility; without visibility, there’s no money; and without money, professional rugby as it has been framed by the major unions goes to hell in a handcart.
Since time immemorial, non-American sports have found America almost impossible to crack. Football, the opium of the masses across great swathes of the planet, has made an impact of sorts, but it is hardly the first thing the average Joe and Josephine think of over their breakfast hash browns. This being the case, it is difficult to imagine Exeter landing a blow on Kansas City in the marketing battle of the rival Chiefs.
Yet we now know that the rugby folk at the top end of the game in the United States feel ready to host a World Cup in the next few years. Jim Brown, the man fronting the campaign, said a few days ago that 30 major cities were interested in staging matches and as Brown bears little resemblance to a certain former President of recent vintage, he may even be telling the truth.
Let us assume for a second that all goes well with the bid, with Brown and his colleagues making good on their suggestion that the great citadels of American Football will open their doors to “the game they play without helmets” and the proposed fixture programme includes visits to Soldier Field in Chicago, the Superdome in New Orleans and the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.
What are the chances of World Rugby, the non-governing governing body who have been praying for the Yanks to make their lives a whole lot wealthier, saying “thanks for your interest but the answer is ‘no’”? Answer: somewhere a long way south of zero.
It will matter not a jot to them if the USA continue to leak points by the hundred and concede tries by the hundredweight to understrength gatherings of All Blacks, as they did in Washington last weekend.
Neither will the NGGB give a flying fritter if the Eagles fail to make a dent in anything more resilient than an empty beer can at the next World Cup in France, just as they did at the one in Japan in 2019 and the one before that in England. (For the record, they have won three games out of 25 since 1987). When it comes to America, rugby is a receipts business, not a results business.
On current evidence, the only way the Eagles will avoid further humiliation in the 2023 competition is by not playing in it. Which is a possibility: having been beaten to the continent’s first qualification spot by Uruguay, they must prevail over an improving Chile team who did for Canada last time out. Failure will consign them to the repechage and a meeting with Tonga. Good luck with that.
The emergence of Chilean rugby is just a little inconvenient for the NGGB, for it reinforces a powerful argument mounted by many rightthinking rugby lovers: namely, that if a World Cup was being awarded to the Americas for sporting reasons rather than bare-faced commercial ones, we would be looking South, not North.
Argentina, two-time semi-finalists who over-deliver at World Cup level almost as often as the USA under-perform, can offer a dozen stadiums with capacities of 40,000-plus – the list includes venues in Cordoba, Mendoza and Santa Fe, as well as Buenos Aires – as well as good-sized grounds in Salta and Tucuman, both of which have staged important tier-one Tests in recent years. Sell-outs in Puma territory would not be a problem.
Spread a little of the love to Montevideo and Santiago and there you have it: a tournament to ravish the senses in a part of the world where rugby is strengthening its hold.
By contrast, what does North America offer, apart from the aforementioned squillions? For all the he-man talk of rugby taking its rightful place in the hearts of US sports nuts, there has never been much sign of it doing anything of the sort. Meanwhile, the Canadians are at their lowest ebb and still descending, faster than Jacques Cousteau.
Sadly, it is impossible to believe the NGGB will look beyond the greenbacks. It is not an organisation wholly bereft of imagination – the decision to stage the 2019 competition in Japan was undeniably ambitious, even if the failure to plan for a typhoon in typhoon season left the organisers wriggling on the prongs of a thousand jokes – but they have yet to prove themselves capable of more than one bold call a decade.
Their most recent initiative? A law change allowing men to wear tights on the field of play. So that’s okay. Sleep easy in your beds, people: God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.
“The only way the Eagles will avoid humiliation in the 2023 competition is by not playing in it”