Mark Offerdahl will skipper USA at the Rugby League World Cup, which kicks off in Australia on 27 October, when the hosts take on England in the opening match. Having played in five different countries – Australia, France, Wales, England and the US – Offerdahl is a well-travelled professional and not the stereotypical rugby player. I met up with him in his west London home soon after he had been told he was being released by London Broncos. Meet Captain America…

What do you make of your opponents in the World Cup group stage: Fiji, Italy and Papua New Guinea? Very, very tough – a lot harder than last time. I think Fiji or Italy will be a class above. Italy’s squad are all NRL players: it’s nuts. Fiji are going to be good. They’ve been semi-finalists in the last two World Cups. Them having Jarryd Hayne will hopefully get us some exposure. And PNG are going to be tough over there. But I’m really excited. I can’t wait to get over there.

It seems strange that the games in the tropics are in the afternoon in summer, when it’s roasting and British and American TV viewers are in bed… I’m not just saying this because I’m a redhead but some boys are going to think: “What the hell’s going on with this?” The Cowboys never play in the afternoon up there. It doesn’t make sense. At least make them night games. And why have Cairns and Townsville but not have a game in Adelaide? They’ve obviously manipulated it to make those teams do better. I guess Tonga were saying that last time [when they had to play Scotland on a winter’s night in Cumbria], though.

Your national coach, Brian McDermott of Leeds Rhinos, is one of the world’s best. What have the preparations been like? Brian sent out info to all the eligible players: what we have to learn. But he’s been busy with Leeds. It was like that at the last World Cup: there’s not much he can do until the players are in front of him. We all meet in Brisbane and fly up to Townsville. Last time we just turned up and thought: “Shit, we’ve got a good team!” Hopefully that happens again.

Mark Offerdahl playing for USA at the 2013 World Cup. Photograph: Action Plus Sports Images/Alamy

Some stars emerged from the USA team at the last World Cup. Do you expect the same to happen this time? We’ve got more domestic American boys coming this time. I’ve been watching a fair bit. There’s a kid called Josh Rice, an ex-football linebacker from New York, and some of the hits he puts on people are ridiculous. Andrew Kneisley is a front rower who will do everything he can. Junior Vaivai has played NRL. He’s better than me! He could play where he wants. Then there’s Ryan Burroughs and Joe Eichner from the Wolfpack. Ryan has come freaking out of nowhere. Hopefully he’ll get picked up by an NRL team off the back of this.

The World Cup in 2013 was a great success for the US team but has there been any legacy? I can’t see it. There’s a couple of new teams in the south but that’s due to the people down there who are really proactive and help each other out. I suppose that, apart from in the USA, everyone knows there’s a USA team, that they play rugby league in the USA and that we aren’t too shabby because of what we did. There’s no money at all in the domestic comp. You’ve got to pay for your own jerseys. So I don’t blame young kids going to have a crack in other countries, as long as they are willing to come back and help.

What does the US need to get the domestic game to the next level, then? Hopefully this other couple of teams kick off: another Canadian team, a New York team. That will help the level below. It’s in their best interests to grow and develop domestic talent. More kids are going to want to play if they see there’s a professional team they can play for and go to England every other week. They might even start choosing that over rugby union. The other sports are too established there. Rugby union is all around the US now as it’s in the colleges everywhere; it’s growing, it’s getting bigger and better and sevens is huge. If they see league they’ll love it, but they’ll think: “I can’t go to university and play league” and “I can’t go to the Olympics to play league”. So that’s going to hurt it. But money talks. If there’s professional teams in New York, Jacksonville, Philadelphia, all types of options open up.

You’re leaving London Broncos and have been linked with the new New York club for 2019. What about 2018? I’ve got an offer to play rugby union in New Orleans in the new comp, from December until June. It’s just a letter of intent now. I played a lot growing up as a kid and had a couple of seasons in between league when I was in the States. I played inside centre but I think I’ll be moving into the forwards now, so I will need to brush up on my skills. But eventually I want to end up playing league back in New York where I lived before.

Is there an emotional pull back to the States for you? No, not emotional. I’ve only got distant relatives there now, but I just love the place. I love how passionate they are with sport, how passionate they are with life, the different places there are to go visit. I’ve not lived there too long – only for year, whereas I’ve been in England a while.

What have you made of Toronto’s impact in League 1? It’s a great thing the Wolfpack are doing. It’s nuts there, getting more fans than some Super League teams. I thought the money might run out, when they’re paying to fly everyone over. But they’ve got a deal with an airline and if you’ve got the backers... I didn’t think they’d have a problem with crowds as I’ve played a couple of Canada-US internationals there and they got five or six thousand for those and they weren’t crazily promoted. They just love their sport there. And Lamport Stadium is in the middle of the city, which is really cool. If they get that second Canadian team up there Canada will be a powerhouse international team.

Toronto Wolfpack players Greg Worthington and Rhys Jacks pose for a selfie with fans after their 62-12 win over the Oxford in May 2017. Photograph: Steve Russell/Toronto Star/Getty Images

You’ve played a lot in the Championship. What do you make of it? The Championship is a good competition. It’s hard, there are some big boys in there. Compare it to Queensland Cup or New South Wales Cup and I think they are a bit farther ahead in their professionalism and they have a bigger player pool. There’s more money floating about there as well. But us, Hull KR, Featherstone and Halifax would kick it with a few of them, but we might be struggling against PNG Hunters, Redcliffe Dolphins and their likes. We’d have a good crack. In the Q Cup there’s a couple of teams now who seem to finish last every year, and that never used to be. No one team was paying more but I’ve heard there are now.

What did you make of the standard and concept of the middle eight Qualifiers? I didn’t play in any of our games but there is a big, big difference in the standard from the normal Championship. The Super League clubs are definitely stronger. When they want to turn it on they can. What Hull KR did was a mirror image of Leigh last year. There’s not that big a gap for the team that drops down and stays full-time, but there is for the rest of the Championship teams. I think Toronto are going to do really, really well next year so you are going to have two or three teams in the Championship who could afford to be in Super League. Maybe the time is coming to have more teams in Super League while also keeping promotion and relegation.

If results had gone a certain way in the penultimate round, one point would have separated four teams. That suggests it works. It’s a cool format but I can’t speak for full-time Super League players who face losing a lot of money if they drop down, getting anxious and worrying about where they are going to be next year. I think it would be better if the top two in the Championship and bottom two in Super League had a play-off. I like the idea of the two leagues playing against each other to survive. Sky loves it and if it’s bringing in money from them, sweet. All the Hull KR players picked up full-time contracts this year. Nobody was really out of it. It’s more off-the-field staff.

Can you see why certain players are in the Championship and not Super League? Yeah, you can with any competition. I’m no bloody super coach but I sometimes think: “Holy shit! He could be developed, he could be a really good Super League player – I don’t know what’s stopping him, if he’s got off-the-field behavioural problems or stuff like that.” Like Alex Foster, I don’t know why he played for us last year. He was so far ahead of us and that competition, brushing off three or four guys to score tries. Going to Castleford is the best thing he’s ever done.



What are you going to take away from your two years in London? A wife! I’ve had a real good time. I love to travel and London’s a really good base. I’ve got out to all over Europe, Scotland, Ireland, Wales even – beautiful place. I’ve still got a lot more to go, so I will be back. I’ve made a lot of mates here team-wise that I wouldn’t have known otherwise. We’ve started a business over here so it gives me reason to come back.

Can you tell us about that? I hear it’s quite unusual… The business is selling organic health food and grass-fed health food: healthy snacks that benefit the human body. We started offering biltong and now we are also selling organic matcha green tea and organic acai from Brazil. We try to source the products from where they are made, as cheap as we can and sell it wholesale online on our website. After I went back home I saw these health food companies popping up and it’s only going to get bigger.

How did that come about? I’ve always been business-minded but lacked the funds to give it a crack or been too lazy. Now I’ve identified the opportunity and learned how to minimise risk. I started when I was doing my degree in business entrepreneurship so we use the company as a case study. It’s a social enterprise. A lot of our profits go towards helping charities. We’ve just linked up with Sporting Chance. The RFL, RFU and PFA give them money to help their players but there’s a group of athletes there – boxers etc – who don’t have any money provided for them. So we are trying to raise money to help those guys from different sports. We’ll work with different charities related to sustainable farming, clean drinking water, climate change, which is a massive one because obviously the world is dying. We don’t just want to give them money, we want to help them out, pick up our stuff for two weeks and go to Africa and build a well. That’s the ethos.

Mark Offerdahl celebrates after scoring a try for USA against Cook Islands in the 2013 Rugby League World Cup. Photograph: Alex Whitehead/SWpix/Rex/Shutterstock

Do you think you will leave rugby league when you stop playing then? I want to give coaching a go. I’ve done a bit and didn’t mind it – and I have my certificates. I have a strength and conditioning background but I think every coach should have a holistic approach and know everything that’s going on around them.

Are full-time players worse off than part-timers when it comes to transitioning into another career? Well, if I was part-time with a job, I wouldn’t have any time to get this start-up going. As an athlete, you train hard and then your body needs to rest. In those rest periods I’ve been doing my degree remotely and working on this business. If that means jumping in the car and going to see a wholesaler then so be it. Whatever money you earn now you’ve got to start making it work. I only realised that about five years ago. Before that I just wasted my time, going home and watching movies: most players are watching Netflix when I’m researching the business. I encourage the players to try something and if they don’t like it or it doesn’t work out, move on to something else.

That seems to be the culture in British professional sport: do nothing else until it’s too late. There are a lot of players who have no idea what they are going to do after they finish playing. Australia is good with that now. They earn mega money over there and there’s a lot of people pushing kids to be more switched on. Some players employ people or have been on courses to know how to invest that money well. But it’s not as big over here. I started doing a degree because I was scared about what I could do after football. Then once you start you realise you can do anything. It really opened my eyes.

Follow No Helmets Required on Twitter and Facebook