The game the USA don't play for money

The Ryder Cup showed us the Americans at their best and their worst. Astonishingly competitive, and natural born winners, if obnoxiously devoid of class in doing so. But whereas in golf they can conquer the continent of Europe, when it comes to the Rugby World Cup they are minnows, and humble with it.

The long-standing American coach Jack Clark was patently even a little embarrassed by some of the antics of his golfing compatriots over the weekend. "Golf's a funny game, isn't it? It's got a bunch of rules associated with it which might never be broke or broke over time," he said.

"I don't have an awful lot of time for that stuff. I think it's all kind of silly. Over-celebrating is pretty classless and I think a bunch of silly rules are equally as ridiculous." As for RWC '99, the self-proclaimed, and grudgingly accepted, leaders of the world in so many fields arrive at this event with the status of a Third World country. Unlike Ireland. "It's apples and oranges," reasons Clark. "Ireland is a very professional team. They've kind of cradled the game development programme. I watched the under-21 (interpro) game the other day in Donnybrook and I'd be happy if our guys could play with that skill level. It was very impressive.

"Rugby in America is a very recreational pursuit. People care about it, it becomes your sport. But it's a kind of Tuesday-Thursday night kind of have a run thing. I believe that the players who really passionately pursue it at the top end of our game take it very seriously. But it is still by and large a recreational endeavour which is not in the sports pages, which is not on the television set. You occasionally find some story in the lifestyle section, but not in the sport section."

That is beginning to change however. Sky television have come aboard with American rugby in a five-year deal and will show the US's Epson Cup games and their home Tests, as well as next Saturday's Pool E opener against Ireland, which will be broadcast by Fox TV who can reach 57 million homes.

A recent feature piece on the American's one undoubted world-class player, Dan Lyle, in Sports Illustrated was also seen as a major breakthrough. It is the most telling example yet of rugby being taken seriously as a sport in the US for the first time. The main problem, as Clark sees it, is "the branding of the sport".

"It will come. In fact, I believe strongly that the game will be unrecognisable in about 10 years. But, today, we're a very amateur rugby union with volunteer administrators and everyone in the game doing their best in their part-time."

Vying with four or five established sports, and their collegiate offspring, in every major city, the way Clark and others such as the squad's press officers Kurt Oele and Scott Compton describe it, rugby in the US seems almost equivalent to an underground movement. The minimum requirement for away game travel (at a player's own expense) in the 16-team club championship first division (won for the last three years by the quaintly named Gentlemen of Aspen) is seven or eight hours by car, or one and a half hours by plane.

Pitches are more likely to be public parklands than stadiums. Changing-rooms are as likely to be the cars the players came in. As one US squad member revealed, participation at these finals bailed him out of his stint on his club's rotating "field set-up", ie setting up the sticks and the flags, and marking the pitch. By comparison, on arrival at DLSP's grounds in Kilternan one player was heard to exclaim: "Hey, locker-rooms." Luxury.

"Our players aren't in competitions where they can develop the skills to play international rugby. They don't play in hard and fast competitions," says Clark. The exceptions are the quartet of the current 30-man squad who are plying a professional rugby trade abroad - Tom Billups (Pontypridd), Luke Gross (Rovigo), Dave Hodges (Llanelli) and Dan Lyle (Bath). One of these, Lyle, estimates that American club rugby is "eight to 10 tiers below what it takes to compete at Test level. That's how big the jump is."

For the remainder of the squad, bar a few students, competing in these World Cup finals will actually put them out of pocket. For example, their elder statesman, 39-year-old out-half Mark Williams, reckons the loss to his earnings as an interior designer in Aspen, Colorado will be in the region $3,500.

"But our guys would do anything to be here and are proud to be here," says Clark. "I'm so proud of them that they're willing to make this sacrifice. For me personally I feel honoured to be with them."

Clark's main reason for believing that American rugby will be unrecognisable in a decade's time is that there will be "a professional, city-based competition. You'll flip on your television set and see Chicago play Dallas, and New York play LA, and you'll read about it in your sports pages. And it won't be a great occasion when it's in a national publication like Sports Illustrated. It'll be very routine."

All of these ambitions are merely at the drawing-board phase. For the time being US rugby has to wage another, parallel campaign to attract potential players when they are young. Rugby players in the US tend to start playing the game at college level, where the game is relatively strong, but by comparison rugby hardly exists at school level.

Thus, according to their technical officer and one of the team's back-up coaches, Irishman Eddie O'Sullivan, the pyramid is essentially upside down. Of the 30,000-plus Americans playing the game, there are numbers playing the game at adult level, but comparatively little coming through from under-age level.

The country's sheer geography is a massive hurdle, bearing in mind the 3,000 miles difference from coast to coast, which incorporates 37 subunions. It's easy to forget that the United States' Rugby Union is the youngest of the 20 finalists, having been founded in 1975. Joining the prestigious US Olympic Committee last year was a huge step forward.

A big showing and a big result at these or future World Cup finals might go some way toward the game's development in the US, but that looks unlikely this time around. Clark doesn't think in terms of what is a benchmark for a good US World Cup campaign, but targets their second Pool E game against Romania as their most important.

"I say that because of where it's located. If we pull off the upset of the decade on October 2nd it wouldn't be much if we didn't follow that up the next Saturday without a victory (against Romania), would it? Win or lose against Ireland, Romania's always going to be our most important game."