News that USA Rugby will launch Women’s Elite Rugby (WER) in 2025 is ground-breaking. It will become the first pro-rugby league in the States. The long-term aim is to advance standards to meet the demands of a home World Cup in 2033.
The difficulties speak for themselves. WER will replace the Women’s Premier League (WPL), founded in 2009, which is a throroughly amateur enterprise, consisting of just seven clubs nationwide, working on a pay-to-play basis. USAR recognises that it is no longer a viable proposition.
Equally the men’s equivalent league (MLR) has seen two clubs, Los Angeles and New York, close down through lack of funding. So acquiring the necessary investment will be central to the cause.
An untapped El Dorado
World Rugby has long considered the USA as the El Dorado for the spread of the game. But it has needed to put its hand in its own pocket before the great wealth of the nation can take over to provide a secure future. It has helped fund the creation of a new club in the MLR to help overcome those two losses.
Two people in charge at the WER, Dr Jessica Hammond-Graf, the President, and Katherine Aversano, a vice-president, are encouraged by several factors: the worldwide growth in popularity of the women’s game; the $15m the RFU has thrown into its own women’s game, and initial soundings made to obtain investment from major corporations.
The current objectives look like this: between six and eight clubs (that is, no more than at present; the current seven perform in Boston, California (two), Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis and New York); squads of around 30, supported by professional back-room staffs. The board is looking at a 10-year expansion, reminiscent of the PWR’s planning in England. On balance an eight-club championship would be more beneficial: more matches, more competition, more chances to raise standards to equal the best the world can offer.
This is the sort of pattern that has worked well in the States in women’s basketball and volleyball. But that first sport is a native American creation, and gains a patriotic following as a result. It’s quite another matter whether the new rugby clubs can acquire specialist coaches with the sort of know-how available to the top nations.
To help raise rugby’s profile WER can cite the Olympic Sevens, due in Los Angeles in 2028, and more distantly the men’s World Cup in 2031.
The USA faces the same problems as Canada and Australia. Three vast nations, where a local derby might mean a flight of an hour or two, not a five-mile coach trip. At national level players will be able to assemble only when they are fully supported. The WPL clubs stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in itself a healthy sign, but the logistics have to prove sustainable. Ideally the WPL clubs would prove willing to join the new venture.
Till now the preferred route to success was via Sevens. It’s up to the Fifteens version to prove it can win the nation’s heart.
Given America’s famous qualities of get-up-and-go, the prognosis looks favourable. It’s good to see a new path opening up; if and when the money is assured, the sky’s the limit. We might even see the US players now attached to PWR clubs happy to return home and display the necessary standards for a new generation.
