As a sense of inevitability descends over the team colours of the final eight nations in the Rugby World Cup, there is room to believe that it may not always that way.
While Japan have captured the imagination, as much by their style as effectiveness, the USA, an undernourished colossus in the world of the oval ball, are making some bigger noises about what is ahead.
While South Africa will probably take the score skywards as the US rest 12 players for a final winnable match against Japan on Sunday after the despised four-day turnaround, the States are no longer content to be bit players.
Equal footing
Assistant coach Chris O’Brien believes that within two World Cups, they will be able to compete on an equal footing against the world powers. O’Brien should know. A former USA player, he moved to rugby after a career in the
NFL
where in 1988 he was a kicker on the roster of the New York Jets.
Prior to that he kicked with the Denver Broncos in 1987 and the Philadelphia Eagles the year before. An eclectic talent, O'Brien was also a professional surfer before time was called on all of it and he became a fire fighter in California.
A positively-minded assistant coach with a sharp eye on the pragmatic side of sport, O’Brien has been toughened by his time in major league but he’s optimistically pushing the USA towards top tier status.
“Absolutely the game is growing,” he says. “You’ll see in the next, I’d say, two World Cups where that’s going to really start to show.
“It’s the fastest growing sport in the country right now and you are seeing kids starting at six and eight years old. By the time they get to High School they have got four and five years under their belt.”
"I believe that a couple of World Cups away you are going to see the kids that are in High School, our under 20s, I think you'll see a pretty big change. This World Cup alone you've seen a lot of the Tier Two sides really step up and there's been no really big scores."
The USA’s main problem is the American Dream. O’Brien had a slice of it and knows how it tastes. He understands that the best of rugby cannot equal the financial clout of even the lower scales of football, baseball or basketball, the three fields of dreams etched in the minds of US children.
Still, rugby is aware of those challenges and knows where it is headed.
“In the States all of our big sports pay so much money,” says O’Brien. “Everyone says I can get an NFL player to come and play rugby. But there’s too much money. It’s so hard to teach the sport and they are used to being in a different environment so it’s pretty tough. That’s why it’s about building the foundations.
The dream
“I mean the dream of an American is to play in the NFL, the NBA or Major League Baseball, when you grow up and you want to be an athlete in professional sport. But now you also want to be an Olympian. We can teach a guy sevens a lot faster than we can 15s.”
Both the men’s and women’s US teams have already qualified for the Rio Olympics next year. They are also the current holders of the Olympic title, having won it back in 1924 – the last time it was in the schedule.
The current World Cup squad has 20 World Cup debutants with 13 of the 31 players currently on professionally contracts outside the USA. World Rugby chief executive, Brett Gosper has already stated that the tournament going there is part of World Rugby's agenda for growing the sport.
But by awarding the 2019 tournament to Asia, it was likely the subsequent event would return to a traditional rugby market before expanding into new areas. The US, this summer, pulled out of bidding to host the 2023 event.
More recently Tier One nations have begun to travel to the US and Michael Cheika’s Australian team went there as part of their warm-up schedule before the World Cup began, beating the hosts 10-41 in Soldier Field. That came 10 months after the All Blacks lined out in the famous Chicago ground.
“Competing for 80 minutes and being in that environment . . . we have so many guys that do that week in week out as professionals but most of our guys have second jobs and play rugby twice a week,” says O’Brien. “Once that begins to change a little bit more you’ll see a difference. But I think we can compete and each year it’s going to get better.”
