‘Journey starts in earnest’: DC begins countdown to US Rugby World Cups
World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin arrived in Washington at a busy time in the US capital.
“I don’t think we knew about the NATO summit when we organized this trip,” he says from a couch on the top floor of the National Association of Realtorswith the Capitol dome outside.
Indeed, half the world seems to be at the convention center a few blocks northwest, as motorcades further swell DC’s horrendous traffic. The other half seems to be discussing Joe Biden’s age and fitness for office.
The president’s plight (and his time as a full-back at Syracuse and his love of the Irish team) is duly discussed among World Rugby guests at an evening reception. But Gilpin is here for serious business: kicking off the run-up to two American World Cups, the men in 2031, the women two years later.
“It’s great to have 30 cities and states in the room,” Gilpin said of representatives from potential locations gathered to meet and learn.
“It feels like the journey is really starting now. [We’ll have] a really good session, good content, getting them excited, talking about the economic impact, talking about what it means to be a host city in our world, which is probably different to what they have experienced in the FIFA process [around the 2026 football World Cup] and other things. It’s exciting.”
A close game would help: the US Eagles men play Scotland on Friday night at Audi Field, home of DC United in the MLS.
The last time Gregor Townsend’s team toured the US, they lost 30-29 in swampy Houston in June 2018. DC in July is also swampy, but Scott Lawrence’s Eagles face a tough task. Townsend has plucked 10 players from the Glasgow team that won the United Rugby Championship last month by beating the Bulls in Pretoria.
“The weather won’t necessarily be great, but ticket sales-wise, we’re close to” a sellout of 20,000, Gilpin said.
35,000 tickets have been sold for New Zealand v Fiji in San Diego Next week, Gilpin will talk about providing “content” for rugby-loving Americans and the rugby fanatics. The England men are coming next summer, Gilpin says, adding that “the plan now is to build that regular cadence of content that starts to get the rugby fans excited.
“We’re always late with all this news in the US. We need to talk about next year’s slate as soon as possible after this game. And that goes for the sevens, the women’s teams and the men’s 15s.”
Gilpin also keeps an eye on Anthem RC, the North Carolina team that competed in the American men’s professional competition, Major League Rugby, this year. The team is made up of young, American-qualified talent, Hymn lost all 16 games.
“Anthem has been good,” Gilpin says. “They put a team together very quickly and I think I’m right in saying that none of those combinations of players had played together before.
“They’ve had some brilliant performances. They’ve hit the 65, 70-minute mark in a couple of games, so I think they’ve exceeded expectations in a lot of ways. The biggest thing is going to be having those players together every day in a training environment. The average age of the Anthem team is 23. The average age of a team in MLR [most reliant on foreign talent] is 28. So it’s very deliberately a young, US-focused team and I think we’re already seeing the benefits of that.
“Down in the in the Trophy for players under 20 years old which is happening in Edinburgh right now, there are six Anthem players on the US roster and they are in the semi-finals. There are four Anthem players here on the senior team.”
Elsewhere, World Rugby’s investments below Test level have paid off.
“It’s become a proven model, the most notable example is Fijian Drua. They were in the Australian provincial championship for three years and won that and now two seasons in Super Rugby Pacific and they’ve been successful. And they were the backbone of the national team that reached the quarter-finals in the Rugby World Cup last year.
“We have similar investments in South America, similar investments in Rugby Europe Super Cupsimilar investments with Georgia, Black Lionand now also in the women’s competitions.”
There is irony here: the Chile and Portugal teams that shut out the US at the last World Cup were based on teams backed by the World Rugby Team. Selknam in Chile and Lusitanos in Portugal. After such an American trauma, it seems only fair to give the Eagles a helping hand.
Gilpin outlines a seven-year, five-pillar plan, much of which focuses on the women’s game.
“Two years ago, we talked about the two biggest growth opportunities in our strategic plan, which were the US and women’s soccer, and there’s a huge amount of synergy there,” Gilpin said.
He also sees the “Caitlin Clark effect,” the way the basketball star went supernova, as an example to follow.
“That’s a great example of the power of personality in women’s sports. We can maybe see a little bit of that with some Ilona Maher” – a star of the U.S. women’s sevens team – “is doing around the Olympics, as the face of a Secret deodorant campaign that will soon be in 4,500 Walmarts across the country. She’s going to be the face of that TV commercial, so that’s great for rugby. We’re excited about the U.S. sevens teams in Paris. We’re excited about raising the profile of rugby in the U.S.”
At the NAR building on Thursday, World Rugby guests didn’t go all out. But they did go there to close out the evening, enjoying a Capitol sunset with Abby Gustaitis, a U.S. women’s international turned commentator, and Jim Hamilton, rugby podcaster And entrepreneur.
Hamilton used to play in the second row for Scotland, so will no doubt be hoping for a good win for the tourists in DC. Gilpin and the rest of the World Rugby delegation will be joining the locals in cheering on the Americans.