As the US Eagles prepare for something very new, the six-team Americas Rugby Championship they kick off against Argentina in Houston on Saturday, they will be guided by two men who first met under the auspices of something very old.

“John Mitchell I’ve actually only met a couple of times,” said Marty Veale, the Eagles’ new set-piece coach who, like the new head coach, is a transplanted New Zealander, before his flight to Texas last week. Veale, like fellow assistant coaches Phil Greening (defence) and Rob Hoadley (backs), will work on a contract covering the ARC.

“The first was back in 2000, when he first came back to New Zealand from the UK. He was coaching Waikato B and I was playing for Canterbury B against them. Canterbury took the Shield off them that day, actually, and I met John after the games and I remember walking away and thinking he was a top bloke. And here we are, 16 years later, in a place we maybe wouldn’t have expected.”

On that September day 16 years ago, Canterbury and Waikato’s A teams contested the “log o’ wood”, aka the Ranfurly Shield, the challenge trophy which has been at the heart of New Zealand rugby since 1904.

In rugby, the Ranfurly Shield is old-school. Veale and Mitchell are familiar with the label. The Eagles pack can expect some hard, hard work.

Veale has had a peripatetic career. He was an enforcer in the darkness of the second row in New Zealand, Japan and England, and now lives in New York City. Full disclosure: he does so on the same Washington Heights street as the author, and has a young daughter the same age as the author’s youngest.

Last year, coaching work at Old Blue led Veale to climb on to his Harley Davidson – his bike, facial hair and imposing stature giving him the perhaps unsuspected nickname among Washington Heights fathers of “Special Forces Dad” – and drive up the Hudson Valley to the United States Military Academy at West Point. After that, the Eagles came calling.

Marty Veale coaches the US Eagles forwards in Houston this week. Photograph: USA Rugby

“It was somewhat out of the blue,” he said. “I’ve always had aspirations to coach at the top level but a job with the national team wasn’t in the plan for this year. But it’s an opportunity and I have to take it with both hands.”

The opportunity came after an autumn World Cup in which the Eagles, who travelled to England with high hopes, lost all of their games. Head coach Mike Tolkin was then asked to reapply for his job. He was unsuccessful, leading to the appointment of Mitchell, an All Black No8 who has coached at club level in Europe, in Super Rugby and as an assistant with England and head coach with New Zealand.

For the ARC, an exploratory “Americas Six Nations” also featuring Canada, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil, Mitchell and Veale are joined on staff by two Englishmen, Lions hooker Greening and Hoadley, a former pro centre. There is another connection between the four men: Wasps, the English club which also employed Nigel Melville, now chairman and chief executive of USA Rugby.

“I was wondering when someone was going to spot that,” Veale said, with a laugh. “Phil finished at Wasps a year before I got there, but he’s worked with the USA sevens squad here and we had him down to Old Blue for a week last summer, helping us out, so we worked together there.



“Rob I played with at Wasps and in fact I’ve worked with him as a coach before, with the Collegiate All Americans in 2014 at the Stanford camp they had. We’re pretty good mates and I’m looking forward to working with him.”

How that work pans out under Mitchell – whose arrival for the ARC was delayed by a family matter – will be fascinating to see. Speaking to the Guardian last summer, while in New York with Old Blue, Greening discussed one cultural change he and head coach Mike Friday, another Englishman, had brought to the US sevens team.

“I think our coaching is not the standard way over here,” he said, “there’s a different way to coach in America. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems very much a ‘tell’ culture, where the coach is king. We ripped that apart, and I think that was maybe difficult for the boys to understand. But we got there.”

That they did: the men’s US sevens team are genuine contenders for an Olympic medal in Rio later this year.

The 15-a-side team have further to go. They now take, in Veale’s words, a “step into the unknown”. Games in Houston (non-cap, against an Argentina XV missing overseas pros), Austin (v Canada next weekend) and Fort Lauderdale (Chile, 20 February) come before trips to São Paulo (Brazil, 27 February) and Montevideo (Uruguay, 6 March).

American rugby union has taken a few such steps, not least with the All Blacks’ visit to Chicago in 2014 and a professional competition scheduled to start a month or so after the ARC. Many home-based players in a squad light on experience – including sevens pros Pat Blair and Nick Edwards and young talents like Jake Anderson and Alec Gletzer – will hope to be involved.

European-based pros such as Cam Dolan, Blaine Scully and the returning Todd Clever have only been released for the bigger ARC games.

Veale in action for Wasps, against London Irish. Photograph: David Davies/PA

Most of the squad and all of the coaches will be away for a good long while.

“The ARC is a six-week road trip,” Veale said. “That’s quite a long time away for anybody and certainly from a young family. I’m very lucky my family are so understanding, for sure.

“But I’m also excited to have the chance to work with a good group of guys. We can’t have all the senior players but it’s a chance to develop local guys and get ourselves a deeper pool.

“This tour is going to be a little tricky. It will be about processes, about building. There’s a good foundation there, I think, and the USA team has certainly improved a lot in the recent past. You have your own spin and your own ideas, but you build on what’s there.”



On the day of his appointment, Mitchell discussed his new team: “I was fortunate to watch the Eagles during my [World Cup] commitments … I saw a team that was strong in carry in first phase and loved to shoot in defence.

“Lineout accuracy affected exit plays” – with the scrummage, Veale’s area of expertise – “and they struggled to get back on structure and get into shape from chaos. They often denied themselves opportunities to put pressure on the opposition as a result of this.”

Step up, Greening and Hoadley.



“I’m in there to work on the set-piece,” Veale said, “to make sure we take some ball. We want to be a 100% set-piece team and maybe there has been a perception recently that the US set-piece is vulnerable. So we’ll be looking to change that.”

USA v Argentina XV: B Scully (capt); T Ngwenya, C London, L Filikitonga, K McGowan; J Bird, N Kruger; E Fry, J Taufete’e, C Baumann, B Orth, G Peterson, C Dolan, T Clever, D Tameilau. Replacements: M Sosene-Feagai, O Kilifi, J Hilterbrand, B Landry, A Gletzer, JP Eloff, M Te’o, J Anderson.

Kick-off: 8.10pm ET (ESPN3)



