Alan Gilpin, chief executive of World Rugby, arrived in Washington at a busy time in the US capital.
“I don’t think we knew about the Nato summit when we organised this trip,” he says, from a couch on the top floor at the National Association of Realtors, the Capitol dome looming outside.
Half the world does indeed seem to be at the convention center, a few blocks north-west, motorcades snarling horrible DC traffic still further. 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 love for the Ireland team) is duly discussed among World Rugby’s guests for an evening reception. But Gilpin is here for serious business: kicking-off the run-in to two US World Cups, the men in 2031, the women two years later.
“It’s brilliant to have 30 cities and states in the room,” Gilpin says, of representatives of potential venues, gathered to meet and learn.
“It feels like the journey starting in earnest. [We’ll have] a really good session, some good content, getting them excited, talking about economic impact, talking about what being a host city means in our world, which is probably different maybe than they have experienced in the FIFA process [around the 2026 football World Cup] and other things. It’s exciting.”
An exciting game would help: the men’s US Eagles play Scotland on Friday night at Audi Field, home of DC United in 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 swampy too but Scott Lawrence’s Eagles face a tough task. Townsend has picked 10 players from the Glasgow team that last month won the United Rugby Championship by beating the Bulls in Pretoria.
“The weather is not going to be necessarily great but in terms of ticket sales we’re close” to a 20,000 sell-out, Gilpin says.
Adding 35,000 tickets sold for New Zealand v Fiji in San Diego next week, Gilpin speaks of providing “content” for rugby loving Americans and the merely rugby curious. England’s men will arrive next summer, Gilpin says, adding that “the plan is now to build that regular cadence of content that starts to get the rugby fans excited.
“We’re always late to market with all this news in the US. We need to be talking about next year’s slate as quickly as we can after this fixture. And that includes sevens, it includes the women’s teams and the men’s 15s.”
Gilpin is also running an eye over Anthem RC, the North Carolina team which entered the US men’s pro competition, Major League Rugby, this year. Made up of young, American-qualified talent, Anthem lost all 16 games.
“Anthem has been good,” Gilpin says. “A team was brought together very quickly and I think I’m right in saying none of those combinations of players had played together before.
“They’ve had some brilliant performances. They’ve been been up at the 65-, 70-minute mark in a few games so I think in many respects they exceeded some expectations. The most important thing will continue to be having those players together in a daily training environment. The average age of the Anthem team is 23. The average age of a squad in MLR [most reliant on foreign talent] is 28. So it’s very intentionally a young US-focused team and I think we’re already seeing some of the benefits.
“Down in the in the Under-20s Trophy that’s taking place in Edinburgh right now, there’s six Anthem players in the US squad and they’re in the semi-final. There’s four Anthem players here with the senior team.”
Elsewhere, World Rugby investment below Test level has paid off.
“It’s become a proven model, the highest-profile example being the Fijian Drua. They were three years in the Australian provincial championship and won that and two seasons now in Super Rugby Pacific and they have been successful. And they were the backbone of the national side that made the quarter-finals in the Rugby World Cup last year.
“We’ve got similar investments in in South America, similar investments in Rugby Europe Super Cup, similar investments with Georgia, Black Lion, and now in the women’s competitions as well.”
There is irony here: the Chile and Portugal teams which shut the US out of the last World Cup were built on World Rugby-backed teams, Selknam in Chile and Lusitanos in Portugal. After such American trauma, it seems fair to give the Eagles a hand.
Gilpin describes a seven-year, five-pillar plan. A large part of it is focused on the women’s game.
“We talked two years ago in our strategic plan about the two biggest growth opportunities being the US and the women’s game, and there’s a huge amount of synergy there,” Gilpin says.
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 sport. We may see a bit of that with what Ilona Maher” – a star of the US women’s sevens team – “is doing around the Olympics, as the face of a Secret deodorant campaign that’s about to be across like 4,500 Walmarts across the country. She’s going to be the face of that TV commercial, so that just great for rugby. We’re excited about the US sevens teams in Paris. We’re excited about raising the profile of rugby in the US.”
At the NAR building on Thursday, World Rugby’s guests did not quite raise the roof. But they did go up there to close out the evening, to take in a Capitol sunset with Abby Gustaitis, a US women’s international turned commentator, and Jim Hamilton, rugby podcaster and entrepreneur.
Hamilton used to play second row for Scotland, so will no doubt hope the tourists win well in DC. Gilpin and the rest of the World Rugby delegation will join the locals in urging the Americans on.
