NOT many are expecting a surprise at the end of 80 minutes but the match at Chicago’s Soldier Field between the US Eagles and the All Blacks has to be the main attraction in this opening weekend of November internationals for many reasons.
Where rugby in the US is concerned, it doesn’t get any bigger than this — the first match between the two to be accorded Test status, although the visitors did beat the host 53-6 in San Diego way back in 1980.
The only other time they met was in 1991 during the World Cup, the All Blacks winning 46-6.
Today’s game will be before a sellout crowd of 62,000 and this is again proof of the pull factor of the All Blacks brand. When the Eagles played Ireland in Houston last year the attendance was only 20,181, the previous record.
The Eagles are a tier two team in world rugby and are currently ranked 18th while their opponents are first.
To ensure that they put up a decent fight, USA Rugby has managed to persuade clubs to release their UK and Europe-based players.
The All Blacks meanwhile retain only three players who two weeks ago started the game against the Wallabies in Brisbane.
Captain Richie McCaw is amongst those not required while star flyhalf Dan Carter is named on the bench for what could be his first game after breaking a leg in the Super Rugby final in August. In the run-on 15 is centre Sonny Bill Williams, back in the union game after two years playing league in Australia.
Rugby is definitely growing in the US but trying to win over more American hearts in a country more excited about its football, baseball and basketball is not easy. It’s a crowded sport market.
Those who slowly warm up to rugby however see certain similarities, especially the physicality, between rugby and American football but minus the pads and helmets.
Not many rugby fans know that the Americans in fact won two consecutive gold medals when rugby was an Olympic sport in 1920 and four years later.
But the game collapsed in the US after it was dropped as an Olympic sport and slowly found its footing again only 40 years later.
Finally in 1975 the national union was formed. The Eagles have been in every World Cup since the first in 1987 except for one.
Since 2008 their 7s team have participated in all the International Rugby Union 7s World Series. Not to be outdone, the women’s team won the inaugural Women’s RWC in 1991.
Despite the competition from the three main sports, things are looking up for rugby in the US.
USARUGBY.ORG says that in 2012 the game had 107,000 active members in the country. The number of clubs is about 2,500.
It is on the college campuses that rugby is most popular and in terms of development, five million kids have so far been introduced to the sport over the last five years through the youth and rookie rugby programmes.
And following the announcement in 2009 that rugby would be back in the Olympics from Rio 2016, American interest in the game has been boosted.
An American corporation, AIG, is now one of the major sponsors of the All Blacks and those involved with the game in the US are hoping that the country would be able to host a World Cup maybe four tournaments forward from next year’s event.
The other games slotted for this weekend are the Barbarians-Wallabies clash at Twickenham, in which the former will have 10 from New Zealand playing, and the Japan Maori All Blacks game.
The US Eagles take on Romania, Tonga and Fiji in subsequent weekends but without some of their foreign-based players.