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Pele, George Best, Franz Beckenbauer, David Beckham, Geoff Hurst, Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks, Eusebio and Johan Cruyff... nine sporting icons once lured by the lifestyle and fistful of dollars playing football – or should that be ‘soccer’ – in the good old US of A.

These days you have the likes of Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Andrea Pirlo and David Villa topping up their pensions.

But what price the likes of Alun Wyn Jones, renowned free spirit Jamie Roberts, Mike Phillips, Gethin Jenkins and perhaps even Shane Williams being lured by an American rugby dream?

The announcement that a first ever professional rugby union league is being launched in North America next year will be dismissed by cynics.

There’s an argument the sport, up against the competition of the NFL, not to mention baseball, basketball and ice hockey, doesn’t stand a chance of putting down meaningful roots across the pond. Period.

It would be unwise to not to take this seriously however. There are simply too many resources, human and financial, in this part of the world not to.

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(Image: AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Perhaps the burgeoning Major League Soccer environment, which has attracted the likes David Beckham, Robbie Keane and Gerrard among others has shown rugby the way.

Which is why you mention the above players.

Playing for Wales would almost certainly be off the agenda were anybody to make this move, but Welsh rugby would have cause for concern if the lure of the dollar stole the still valuable twilight years of some of its very best talent.

If you’ve won a Six Nations Grand Slam, been on a Lions tour, played at World Cups, the prospect of mixing your day job with the beaches of Malibu, the foothills of Hollywood and enough green-backs to keep you in protein shakes for life might not be sneezed at.

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Few may realise this, but rugby union is now the fastest growing team sport in the USA. So don’t brush away the danger of a third front opening up alongside the mega rich French and English clubs that threaten the WRU’s quest to keep the best Welsh players in this country

The league, sanctioned by USA Rugby and World Rugby, will begin in April 2016 with six teams from the United States, before Canadian sides join in 2017.

Each team will be allowed no more than five non-North American players, so that’s a potential 30 foreign imports with the promise of more to come when the Canucks join the party a year later.

Initially the first six teams competing will be based in the Northeast, Rocky Mountain and California regions of the States with a 10-game regular season between April and July.

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(Image: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire)

“As the fastest growing team sport in the USA, it is time to have a sanctioned professional competition,” said USA Rugby chairman Bob Latham.

“We are very happy to partner with the Professional Rugby Organisation (Pro Rugby) in taking this step to popularise the game, to inspire Americans to fall in love with rugby, and to show the rugby world what American players can do.”

Each Pro Rugby team is expected to be centrally owned and managed and to have a centrally contracted squad, with quotas for overseas players and US Eagles internationals.

And like the ill-fated North American Soccer League which ran from 1968-84 and attracted Best, Cruyff, Beckenbauer, Pele and others, you can bet your bottom dollar Pro Rugby will want some marquee signings in the early years to give the tournament some kudos.

What odds they eye the market for Welsh players?

Could we see a North, Halfpenny, Webb or Roberts cross, not the English Channel but the Atlantic Ocean, in the not-to-distant future?

Professional rugby union competition in America may be great for the global game, but not necessarily for the Welsh game.