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You are missing the point.
There is no grass-roots support for rugby in the US.
Here is a little history lesson. Yes, the US has been playing rugby and fielding rugby teams for over 100 years. In fact, rugby was very popular in the 19ith century but it became a very violent sport, at least as it was played in the US with numerous serious injuries. At that point, Walter Camp codified the game that would turn into what is currently known as American football. American football took off in popularity and rugby faded in the US, relegated to being played largely as a second-tier college sport.
The point isn't whether the US has been playing rugby for a century, which it certainly has. The question is whether little kids wake up every morning with a rugby ball in their hands, dreaming of being the next great US flyhalf. I can assure you this happens in the US for baseball, football and basketball, hell maybe even hockey in the northern states. But not rugby. You have to have that kind of passion from childhood to get any good at it. The Pacific Islanders are good because kids there have rugby in their blood. It is simply not the case in the US.
Look at Olympic weightlifting. The US has no shortage of big strong dudes with a strong weight-training ethic, so why does it suck at Olympic weightlifting? Because there is neither the tradition nor the incentive to strive for years perfecting a highly technical sport for Olympic glory and zero financial benefit. A kid in Turkey can dream of becoming the next Naim Suleymanoglu and weightlifting will always attract talented kids in that part of the world, but not here.
Can it get better? Who knows? There seems to be a thriving high school rugby scene in the US and certainly at the college level. Can we get even a fraction of the best athletes interested in rugby instead of football at the 9 or 10 year-old level instead of 16 or 17? Maybe someday. Waiting until college to pick up rejects from gridiron is too late. You've got too much gridiron and not enough rugby IQ by then and try as you might, you are never going to get good enough to beat the best international teams.
The intangibles are not taught by coaches, they are learned on the playing fields in pickup games. And until you are at a point where kids come home from school, drop off their books and run out to play rugby with their friends in the street or the neighborhood park, you are going to be stuck with plodding teams with lots of pluck but not enough skill.
What if Walter Camp had not codified the American football code into what is now gridiron and rugby had instead been left to be the default "ball in hand" code in the US? What if the 3 major sports in the US were baseball, basketball and rugby? One can only imagine what that would have been like. Wouldn't the US be a perennial favorite in the World Cup, much like basketball today? Lots of what-ifs, but that's not how history played out.
American teams have heart. And they are certainly fit. They just don't have the instinctive rugby skills that are needed to win at the highest level. And they never will in the current scenario.
There is no grass-roots support for rugby in the US.
Here is a little history lesson. Yes, the US has been playing rugby and fielding rugby teams for over 100 years. In fact, rugby was very popular in the 19ith century but it became a very violent sport, at least as it was played in the US with numerous serious injuries. At that point, Walter Camp codified the game that would turn into what is currently known as American football. American football took off in popularity and rugby faded in the US, relegated to being played largely as a second-tier college sport.
The point isn't whether the US has been playing rugby for a century, which it certainly has. The question is whether little kids wake up every morning with a rugby ball in their hands, dreaming of being the next great US flyhalf. I can assure you this happens in the US for baseball, football and basketball, hell maybe even hockey in the northern states. But not rugby. You have to have that kind of passion from childhood to get any good at it. The Pacific Islanders are good because kids there have rugby in their blood. It is simply not the case in the US.
Look at Olympic weightlifting. The US has no shortage of big strong dudes with a strong weight-training ethic, so why does it suck at Olympic weightlifting? Because there is neither the tradition nor the incentive to strive for years perfecting a highly technical sport for Olympic glory and zero financial benefit. A kid in Turkey can dream of becoming the next Naim Suleymanoglu and weightlifting will always attract talented kids in that part of the world, but not here.
Can it get better? Who knows? There seems to be a thriving high school rugby scene in the US and certainly at the college level. Can we get even a fraction of the best athletes interested in rugby instead of football at the 9 or 10 year-old level instead of 16 or 17? Maybe someday. Waiting until college to pick up rejects from gridiron is too late. You've got too much gridiron and not enough rugby IQ by then and try as you might, you are never going to get good enough to beat the best international teams.
The intangibles are not taught by coaches, they are learned on the playing fields in pickup games. And until you are at a point where kids come home from school, drop off their books and run out to play rugby with their friends in the street or the neighborhood park, you are going to be stuck with plodding teams with lots of pluck but not enough skill.
What if Walter Camp had not codified the American football code into what is now gridiron and rugby had instead been left to be the default "ball in hand" code in the US? What if the 3 major sports in the US were baseball, basketball and rugby? One can only imagine what that would have been like. Wouldn't the US be a perennial favorite in the World Cup, much like basketball today? Lots of what-ifs, but that's not how history played out.
American teams have heart. And they are certainly fit. They just don't have the instinctive rugby skills that are needed to win at the highest level. And they never will in the current scenario.
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