NFL joins plan aiming to create professional rugby union league in US

Premier Rugby Limited, which represents the English Aviva Premiership clubs, and the National Football League are to jointly back an innovative rugby union plan in the US.

London Irish will play an exhibition game this summer against a “US Barbarians”-style team blending international stars and promising young talent, the Guardian can reveal, with the aim to later create a professional rugby union competition in the United States.

The match will take place at Gillette Stadium near Boston on August 10 and be called the Independence Cup. It is the first step towards establishing an East Coast league of about six teams from Boston to Miami that would begin as early as next year.

The fixture is backed by Premier Rugby Limited (PRL) and the NFL via its NFL Network television channel, which is set to broadcast the game. A return match in London, ideally at Twickenham and potentially against a different club, will take place a week later and could be televised in the UK and Ireland by BT Sport, the new Premiership rights holder.

The invitational US team to face London Irish will be given an identity evoking the New England region’s Irish heritage. The organizers are hoping to entice the area’s Irish population and raise a crowd of around 30,000 to show that professional club rugby could be viable in the US.

If the event is a success, the plan is to build on that momentum and seek potential investors who are willing to pay for one of the new franchises and to conclude deals to play fixtures in NFL stadiums. The NFL Network is hoping to find live sports to cover outside of the American football season

The promoters and producers, Minnesota-based RugbyLaw, believe that tens of millions of dollars will be required if the league is to be viable and of a high standard from the start. But PRL and the NFL are powerful partners and George Robertson and Michael Clements, of RugbyLaw, are convinced they have a winning formula.

They think that well-known overseas stars will be attracted by the opportunity to live and work in the US, providing the league with headline acts. As for the unknowns who will fill out the bulk of the rosters, the organizers intend to tap in to a vast resource, the thousands of high-caliber college American football players who are forced to give up their athletics careers after their senior year because only a small percentage can make it to the NFL or the Canadian Football League (CFL). Players who make it to the NFL but are then discarded will also be considered.

Given the similarities between American football and rugby, the ambitious hope is that the former football players can be persuaded to try a new sport – and learn it quickly enough to be effective.

The organizers want to create a kind of American Barbarians for the match against London Irish, mixing established guest names with young players selected via a summer combine and month-long training camp at a university in the Midwest. US national team players will not be involved.

The James Grant Group, a leading talent agency, has been engaged to find around ten well-known players who are available, for example by targeting internationals who are about to retire. Coaches with significant international experience are expected to be signed in the next few days.

Robertson said he is confident the process can:

“Swiftly identify and develop 15 then 30 then 100 international elite level rugby union XVs players from the graduating NCAA Division One athletes and with NFL or CFL players who wish to have another contact football career option. All they require is the appropriate respect paid to their ability and professional grade coaching. We will provide both.”

“The richest resource America can present to the world of rugby union will be the thousands of pro- level athletes currently not playing rugby union – the application of a well-thought-out system to find them, identify them, and then coach them.”

“There is no need to re-invent the wheel in how to find elite American rugby union talent – America is already the undisputed global leader in professional contact football with the NFL and NCAA – we will simply implement the same system starting with a combine.”

With only three months until the game at the home of the New England Patriots, the scheme faces a race against time to discover and train enough players to make it a credible contest.

USARFU, US rugby’s governing body, is cautiously backing the match but eager for more detail about the American team. There will be concerns that if a private league becomes reality, USARFU could lose influence over the future direction of rugby in the US. But a successful American rugby union league with a production line of young talent should help the national team thrive in the coming years as the country aims to develop enough to become a serious global player and host a World Cup within fifteen years.