From the poverty line to the World Series
This pack of disrupters can shake up the US sporting landscape, writes
‘Our boys operate on salaries equivalent to stacking shelves’
As Perry Baker stands shirtless in the bowels of Twickenham Stadium giving a television interview to an Argentine sports reporter, the United States sevens player looks the very model of the modern sporting star. On his way out to rejoin his team-mates he flashes a winning smile and good view of his glistening torso complete with a large tattoo of the Olympic rings.
If you were to take this picture of Baker at face value, along with the fact his side have a good chance of making history this weekend at the Paris Sevens by becoming World Series champions for the first time, you could imagine the US sevens players are living the high life.
Sporting realists,
however, would be fairly confident in guessing that Baker and his team-mates earn far less than their compatriots in the traditional American professional sports of football, basketball and baseball.
Much has been made of the Rugby Football Union’s plans to scrap the England sevens programme, with players on salaries of £30,000£90,000 per year. These pay packets are extremely generous compared with what the US sevens side earn. Head coach, former Wasps and Harlequins scrum-half Mike Friday, claims his team are living on the poverty line.
The coach who goes by the nickname “Geezer” told The Daily Telegraph:
“Our boys operate on salaries that are equivalent to stacking shelves in Walmart, they live on the poverty line in California. But they don’t whinge or moan, they work hard.”
It is one thing to hear of players from less economically developed countries such as Fiji struggling financially. But it is quite shocking to hear of the problems for a US side who surprised the likes of New Zealand, South Africa and England to earn the first Olympic qualifying spot for next year’s Tokyo Games.
Rugby may be a minority sport Stateside but for the national team of the world’s largest economy to be living hand to mouth is difficult to comprehend. Yet this is the reality. “We are a tier-two rugby union in a tier-one economy with tier-three resources. Everything that goes against us, goes against us,” Friday said.
Baker has spoken candidly about how he slept on a friend’s sofa when he was trying to find his way in rugby after his NFL dreams were cut short by a knee injury. This story, along with the current precarious situation the team find themselves in, should perhaps not be surprising as, just as with the sporting landscape, socio-economically the US is increasingly becoming a nation of haves and have-nots.
Friday seems to enjoy breaking the glass ceiling of rugby sevens, so does this sense of being outsiders and their monetary woes give them a chip on their shoulder? The coach sees it differently.
“We like to be disrupters, we are a pack of dogs, we are a very diverse group, so that is how we portray ourselves. We are a brotherhood but we see each other as this pack of dogs that will fight and do anything for each other,” he said. Fittingly, for the leader of this plucky pack of underdogs, Friday has the face of a wolf inked on his forearm.
Surely, if the Americans were to win the World Series – they are just two points behind Fiji and had been leading going into the London event – it would be life-changing for the squad?
Friday puts any American dreams on hold and takes a more pragmatic approach.
“I wouldn’t say it would be life-changing. It would give us a step up to get the big machine moving,” he said. “We have to open that door in America and we have probably just creaked it open, there are a few glints of light.”