Rugby league in the USA: touring heroes, fights and a Vegas residency

T hey were hanging off the rafters and window ledges. They were standing on rooftops and perched along precarious walls: Sydney Cricket Ground was overflowing. More than 65,000 people were inside and another 5,000 were locked out, scrambling for vantage points. But this was no Origin decider. Seventy years ago this week, the SCG was packed out for the visit of the American All Stars, a team of college football players who had no knowledge of rugby league just a month before.

Three days later, to mark the Queen’s coronation, another 32,554 fans attended the SCG to watch the Americans score 41 points against a New South Wales side featuring Clive Churchill, Keith Holman, Noel Pidding and Harry Wells, courtesy of a generous display of defending and refereeing (albeit the Blues heaped on 62 points themselves). American half-back Gary Kerkorian, a Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback the previous season, scored all 13 of his kicks at goal that week. The future looked exhilarating.

And yet American rugby league would not enjoy a better month until October 2013, when the USA stunned France, the Cook Islands and Wales to reach the quarter-finals of the World Cup. In the decade since my book about the All Stars came out and launched this blog, American rugby league has had many more false dawns than rays of sunshine.

Every decade or so someone tries to launch a professional league in the US. The first attempt was in 1959, when Californian entrepreneurs told Bill Fallowfield, the RFL chief, that the LA Rams and San Francisco 49ers (and BC Lions in Canada) would provide their players to a new rugby league competition during the NFL off-season. It was called the NARL. So was the latest failed attempt – a semi-pro league that collapsed