Rúaidhrí O’Connor
If rugby is to realise its American dream, then it must learn the lessons from Saturday’s farce at Soldier Field quickly.
Commercially, Ireland and New Zealand can declare their visit to Chicago a success, but those who attended the game will think twice about returning given the elements of the event that took away from the experience.
On Friday, IRFU chief executive Kevin Potts and his New Zealand counterpart Mark Robinson flanked World Rugby chief Alan Gilpin as they outlined their plan to conquer America ahead of the 2031 World Cup.
The strategy involved Tier One nations taking out of window international games to the USA, with Ireland committed to staging one match a year there until 2031.
Aided by their central control of players which allows them to pull their stars from the provinces outside of the World Rugby windows, the IRFU and NZRU are both ahead of the curve in this regard.
Saturday’s game was the most lucrative in New Zealand’s history outside of their home Lions Tests in 2017, while Ireland brought home close to what they would normally earn from a home match at Lansdowne Road.
Each union got 40 per cent of the revenues, with a third party taking home the rest.
The fans we spoke to in Chicago, some of whom had paid $750 per ticket, sounded like they’d take some convincing to return after what they experienced.
Despite the extensive knowledge in both unions, Soldier Field did not appear to be prepared for what it was hosting.
The venue is the oldest stadium in the NFL and it’s showing its age, the pitch is not in good condition and the narrow dimensions didn’t help the two teams play the type of rugby that might engage a local audience.
Having attended a Blackhawks’ game in midweek and watched NFL and the World Series games on television, it was galling to see the drop-off in production values in the stadium and on the box.
The singer hired to perform the New Zealand national anthem had to suffer through an interminable wait before the music played, then got some of the Maori words wrong.
After Barry Murphy had nailed ‘Ireland’s Call’, the All Blacks lined up for the haka to the sound of ‘Another Day in Paradise’ by Phil Collins, which only cut off after they’d settled into their formation.
At half-time, there were reports of long queues for the bathrooms and before the game they ran out of Guinness.
But the main issue of course was the five-minute wait for a decision on Tadhg Beirne’s high tackle on Beauden Barrett, the lack of available replays for referee Pierre Brousset and the absence of communication with the people who had shelled out for flights and tickets to be there.
The lack of replays on the big screen was due to the stadium using a separate feed to show crowd shots during breaks in play, rather than the international broadcast feed that would have allowed the referee and the fans see what Beirne had done.
After Brousset had reviewed the incident VAR-style, there was no facility for him to relay his decision to the crowd over the tannoy.
That’s despite rugby getting the idea of broadcasting the referee to the stadium from American sports.
Throw in the cheap looking graphics, poor camera angles and a lack of replays and the folks back home were left frustrated too.
Ultimately, the sport could have rescued everything as it did in 2016 when the teams produced a thriller.
But from the early stages you could tell this wasn’t going to be a classic, the long stoppage for the TMO review only exacerbating a stop-start game full of mistakes.
Whatever about New Zealand, Ireland were being sent out into a game without being up to match fitness and that’s another element of the event being undermined by the organisers.
With the 2031 World Cup in mind, the most worrying element of the weekend was Scotland putting more than 80 points on the US Eagles.
Staging a tournament without a competitive host will be a huge ask.
Yet even if the States had a team capable of going toe-to-toe with the best, it’s not going to work unless the venues are set up properly for the sport, broadcasters understand it and the fan experience is on a level that’s at least close to the NFL, the NHL, MLB and the NBA.
After all, the 2031 World Cup will go up against all four major sports leagues in September and October, as well as the behemoth that is college football which also runs at the same time.
Those factors make rugby’s attempts to break America look like a real long shot, but they’ve got to help themselves by learning the lessons of last Saturday.
