Hard to argue with the summary of the USA rugby effort in The London Times Rugby World Cup guide this past Thursday.
The world, it said, has been waiting forever for the game in America to “harness the big hitters brought up on American football and handlers coming in from basketball.” Then United States rugby could challenge anyone.
But in the meantime, The Times said, this RWC is most likely to “make America realize that sport does not start and end with pretend world championships in American football and baseball.”
The U.S. challenge to get some positive notice on the world rugby stage starts in a few hours as the Eagles take on Samoa at Brighton Stadium.
Not sure how much notice a win will bring, given this question raised by an English fan I talked to yesterday: “How does it feel to be an underdog to a country with a population of less than 200,000?”
But a loss would once again keep the world on hold waiting for the U.S. to answer.
Not sure that Australian scrum half Nick Phipps would still say this about the U.S. rugby team now, but before the Wallabies beat the Eagles 47-10 on Sept. 5, he told The Guardian: “They should cause a couple of upsets at the World Cup. They have some very big, dominant forwards. They have some really big, tall timber in the second row. They also have a couple of centers that are hard runners, and are quite skillful in the offload area as well. They have got threats all around the park.”
The Eagles will need to use all those threats on Sunday as they face Samoa in their first Rugby World Cup 2015 match. A win over Samoa would not be an upset as they have come within a try of beating the Islanders in previous matches. But a win could set up the U.S. to do well in Pool B, which was set topsy-turvy on Saturday with Japan’s upset win over South Africa, previously the heavy favorite to win the pool.
Even with a win on Sunday, it would still be a tough road ahead for the Eagles. Japan is obviously not going to be an easy win on October 11, and before then the U.S. will face Scotland and South Africa, who will be looking to pick up the extra pool points that come with scoring four tries in a match. The way this Pool B is starting out, it could be decided not just on wins and losses, but on getting the advantage through scoring more tries.
It’s set up for a very competitive couple of weeks.
Rugby School Head Master Peter Green wasted no time addressing the question of whether or not the game of rugby started at his school. Immediately after saying welcome to about 60 members of the press on Wednesday, he said, “Whether it was William Webb Ellis or not may be debatable, but what is not is that the game started here.”
The Close at Rugby School, where the game began.
Green compared the cherished tradition about the start of the game to an Old Testament story, something too good to fade away. Some would say that long before Ellis took the ball in hand “in a fine disregard of the rules,” others were carrying, not kicking, something in some kind of game. It might even go back, they say, to Roman times.
Maybe.
My kind of chapel carving.
But as Green pointed out, the rules of the modern game were first written down by students at Rugby School. The first games were played at The Close, an enclosure used for grazing. So players shared the field with sheep, which must have made for some nasty stains on their clothes (no uniforms back then; boys played in school togs). Green said the sides could be as many as 200 against 70 and the matches could last five days, although the rules in the 1880s cut that to three.
Strange to have such lop-sided sides, but maybe there is something in what Green said: “Once some students posted a sign that there would be a match between those who had been flogged by the head master and those who had not. The head master then posted a sign underneath that said if this match came off everyone would end up on the same side.”
Rugby School was founded in 1567, moved to its present grounds in 1756 and Ellis — or someone — ran with the ball in 1823. The school now has 800 students aged 11 to 18 and admitted girls 40 years ago. But it does not have a women’s rugby team.
Statue in Rugby to William Webb Ellis.
“We have girls keen to play,” Green said, “but there are no other schools playing women’s rugby.
“Rugby is a school of obligation, not privilege,” Green said. “We expect our students to leave here and make a mark on the world.”
Previous Rugbeians have done just that. The game of rugby spread as former Rugby students, fellows or teachers became head master at other schools. Others carried the game out of Britain, including Richard Sykes, who some say brought the game to the United States and also established towns in North Dakota.
Rupert Brooke and Matthew Arnold (his father, Thomas, is credited with introducing sports when he was head master at Rugby) are famous poets.
(The paragraph below is in error, brought to my attention in Caspar’s comment below. “O His Coy Mistress” was writtne by Andrew Marvell. Please click here to see my correction.)
Arnold’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” has been one of my favorites since the last day of my college freshman English class. That’s when the girl I sat beside and fruitlessly dreamed about all quarter said “if some guy used that line on me, I’d fall for him in a minute.”
Then I heard the class bell ringing at my back, and she was gone.
Peter Prince, a former shoe maker, stitches rugby balls at the William Webb Ellis Museum.
The video above is provided by England Rugby 2015, responsible for running the six-week tournament. Each of the 20 teams in the Rugby World Cup is being given a welcome ceremony, either in the city where they will play their first game or where they are training.
Running the tournament is a huge task, but the financial rewards for England Rugby 2015 and its parent, Rugby Football Union, are huge, according to an article in The Sunday Times. And the benefits don’t stop there.
Peter Evans and Mark Souster, who wrote The Times article for its Business section, report that the economic activity generated by the tournament will be 2.2 billion pounds with an estimated 982 million pound boost to the British gross domestic product. Broadcasting rights have gone to 205 countries, and 466,000 visitors are expected to come to England for the games.
Ticket sales stand at 93 percent sold and that has brought in 200 million pounds. The Times article included an estimate from the commercial side of the tournament, Rugby World Cup Limited, that the “surplus” (profit) would be 150 million pounds with much of that to be reinvested in the game through tournaments (the Las Vegas Sevens, for example), development of the women’s game and enhancement of the game in Africa and Asia.
Broadcast rights are 60 percent of the income and more comes from the sponsors, most notably Heineken, Land Rover and Emirates airlines.
Pubs are also expected to do well. Evans and Souster ended the article with this quote from a pub owner comparing football (soccer) fans to rugby’s: “People who like rugby tend to arrive at pubs earlier than football fans. They stay all day and they drink more.”
Japan World Cup team attends welcoming ceremony at Brighton Dome. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images for ER2015)
The Japan team has arrived in England and been welcomed at the Brighton Dome.
Japan has a tough opening in the tournament, facing South Africa on Sept. 19 at the Brighton Community Stadium. Japan and the USA Eagles meet on October 11 in Gloucester, the last game in pool play for both. Don’t want to jinx either of them, but I’d bet one or both will be trying to dodge a 0-4 record for World Cup play.
The rest of Pool B will present hefty challenges to both Japan and the United States: South Africa, Scotland and Samoa.
The U.S. team plays Samoa on Sunday, Sept. 20; Scotland on Sept. 27; South Africa on Oct. 7 and finishes with Japan on Oct. 11.
Got word on Facebook from USA forwards coach Justin Fitzpatrick that the team was in the air (in O’Hare in Chicago, actually) and headed this way.
From the England Rugby 2015 news release about the welcome ceremony for Japan, there is no mention of the team performing Kabuki theater or anything else. Maybe the pressure is off the U.S. to perform song and dance in response to “World in Union” on Sunday. Hope the team gets over jet lag faster than we did or they may be best suited to performing “Leave me, loathsome light” from Handel’s opera Semele.
The Samoa team performs at the welcoming ceremony at Brighton Dome Friday. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images for ER2015)
Brighton welcomed the Samoa rugby team today with a choir from Chestnuts Primary School in Bletchley performing “World In Union.”
Samoa responded with a performance of their own, which makes me wonder what the U.S. team will do on Sunday at their welcome ceremony, also in Brighton. A square dance? Break dance? A chorus of “Born in the USA?”
Any suggestions?
The U.S. and Samoa play at noon Sunday, Sept. 20, at the American Express Community Stadium. The two teams met on July 18 in the Pacific Nations Cup with Samoa winning, 21-16.
Members of the the Fiji 2015 World Cup Rugby Union squad sing outside Hampton Court Palace. (Photo by Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images for ER2015)
The first of 20 ceremonies welcoming tournament teams was held today as Fiji answered a song by an Essex choir with their own musical number.
The Fijians meet host England on Friday, Sept. 18, at Twickenham stadium in the first game of the tournament.
Today the Pacific Island team members were at Hampton Court Palace for speeches, the reception of tournament hats and medals and music, sung to them and by them.
According to the England Rugby 2015 news release, a choir from Thurstable School at Tiptree, Essex, performed “World In Union” in front of rugby officials, the player’s families and the local community.
After the ceremony, some of the Fiji team decided to answer with their a rendition of a traditional Fijian hymn. The Fijians posed with tourists for photos and looked ahead to next Friday’s game.
“Plain and simple, we didn’t come here to lose,” Nemani Nadolo, Fiji’s 266-pound, 6-foot-5 winger, said. “We’ve worked really hard as a side . . . We can shock the world.”
Fiji is in what is considered the toughest of the four pools. Besides the match against England, they will play Australia, Wales and Uruguay.
The welcome ceremony for the United States Eagles is scheduled for Sunday in Portsmouth.
The English papers have been filled with rugby news these days, and with the World Cup less than two weeks away, we’re starting to see rugby players featured in other parts of the papers, much like when the Seahawks head to the Super Bowl and Russell Wilson and Richard Sherman show up in the Features section talking about all things except football.
Same here. Ben Machell with The Times of London did a piece on the post-pro rugby life of Mike Tindall, who talked about being a father and about his marriage to Zara Phillips, grand daughter of Queen Elizabeth. Tindall, 36, has 75 caps for England and was part of the 2003 World Cup champions. The article points out that his most known exploit during the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand was leading teammates on a drinking spree that included a visit to a bar that featured dwarf throwing.
The writer spent some time wondering about Tindall’s oft-broke nose, describing it as a “much-loved chewable dog toy; a normal nose staggering home after ten pints; something by Picasso.”
You gotta love this about Tindall: While not playing professional rugby any more, he hasn’t given up the game. He plays for Minchinhampton, an amateur side, but to level the playing field he has made a rule that he will not score any tries.
On the same day as the Tindall article, The Times featured Lewis Moody, another former England player, who has put his house up for rent for RWC fans. The four-bedroom , three-bathroom house goes for 150 pounds a night. The Bath house is offered on Airbnb and the rent goes to the Lewis Moody Foundation, set up to help children and families affected by serious illness.
Careful though before you jump at a chance to stay there. Moody, who played 71 times for England and was also on the 2003 team, has set down some special rules: No Wales or New Zealand All-Black rugby shirts; no haka; and you must sing “God Save the Queen” every morning at 8.
