Henry Paul received an England call-up within months of switching codes from rugby league to union in 2001, but now he has a far tougher conversion to attempt: transforming American football discards into credible rugby players in only a couple of weeks.

The Guardian can reveal that Paul has agreed to be head coach of an American Barbarians side that will face London Irish in August as the curtain-raiser to a planned US professional rugby union league.

The organizers of the match at Gillette Stadium near Boston on August 10 are hoping for a crowd of 30,000 and enough buzz to convince potential investors that a professional league starting as soon as next summer is viable.

As revealed by the Guardian last month, the ambitious plan is to use NFL stadiums along the East Coast from Boston to Miami and create teams by blending veteran overseas stars and former college American football stand-outs who are not wanted by NFL or Canadian Football League clubs.

The organizers, Minneapolis-based RugbyLaw, estimate that each year there are hundreds of potential recruits leaving college football programs and NFL camps who are highly-skilled athletes but have failed to secure their dream job. The twofold gamble is that they can be persuaded to take up rugby and that their skills will be quickly transferable.

This is where Paul comes in for the "Independence Cup" match, which will see London Irish face a Barbarians-style New England Irish XV comprised of American rookies and ten foreign players with elite-level experience. A return game is planned for Twickenham a week later.

About 70 former NCAA Division I college athletes and recently-waived NFL players will be invited to audition at a two-day combine starting in Minnesota on June 21 and Paul will put them through their paces and whittle the number down to 30 ahead of a four-week camp. The international players will arrive for the last 11 days of the camp.

"I'm taking on the head coach role and it entails helping the guys in the States come up with the exercises and drills for the combine. Myself and another couple of coaches will go over, watch the combine, select the athletes," Paul told the Guardian.

"I'm designing some strength-based, speed-based drills similar to the American football NCAA combine... with a little bit of a rugby twist to it on some of the drills that we'll be doing, after the basic speed and strength exercises. Then part of it is to go back over, work with the guys that we've selected and in a small amount of time try and get them up to speed on the ins and outs of rugby union."

Given the size of the US, the country's sports obsession and the outstanding facilities and coaching at university level, there is no question that the pool of athletes is deep. But Paul concedes it will be a huge test to develop enough raw talent in the space of a summer.

"When you look at the fundamentals of rugby - run, catch, pass, tackle, ruck - out of those five fundamentals these guys I'm sure know how to run, can probably catch pretty well and they can tackle. Within those five fundamentals are a thousand-and-one nuances. But I think the rucking, the passing, obviously the key skills that rugby union's foundations are on, are going to be a challenge. I think the whole thing's a challenge but I'm an optimist," he said.

"It's not enough [time] but I think we can make them credible. Whether they'll throw 30-meter long spiral passes out on their own, I don't know; but whether we get them to hand off, use their evasion skills, their speed and their power... What's going to be difficult is things like the mauling. It's just unnatural. People forget that professionals make mistakes in these sort of areas. So we're going to do our best. I think these are great athletes, and we'll see.

"Our front row's going to be foreign, has to be - we just don't have enough time, so for safety reasons. Probably our second row and then we'll work back from there. Maybe our nine, our ten, has to be foreign as well to direct us round the field."

Henry Paul played rugby league for the Bradford Bulls before switching to union. Photograph: Tom Jenkins



Born in New Zealand, Paul played rugby league for Wigan and Bradford in England for nearly a decade then switched to union and joined Gloucester in 2001. He represented England in the Six Nations and also in Sevens. Now 39, he was an assistant coach for the Russia national team from 2010 until three months ago and played a part in that country's dramatic improvement. In April he was appointed director of rugby at Bradford and Bingley RFC.

"The Russians had grown up playing from the ages of 9, 10, 12. So they started at quite a young age. The fundamentals are challenging with the Russians, we had to work on some of the core skills again but they did have those basics in hand," Paul said. "Six weeks is not a lot of time but then I don't have to worry about getting these guys fit and strong which was probably the challenge with Russia."

Michael Clements of RugbyLaw is confident that American football players will want to try rugby once made aware of the opportunity. "They assimilate quickly. We have seen it. When you're an athlete you adapt... Everybody gets to carry the ball and that's a huge thing for participating," he told the Guardian.

"The idea they started with by wanting to play within the NFL for all the glorious reasons is still a great idea. The contact sport, the big stadium, the large crowd, the fan admiration are all still present and very much alive... The sport has changed, the ball has changed a bit, but it's all still there and the dream can live on and be realized. The by-product of keeping the athlete's dream alive is the ability to quench the thirst of the NFL fan by capitalizing on the off-season."

A handful of players have transferred between the sports, sometimes quickly. Nate Ebner, a safety with the New England Patriots, was a stand-out rugby player for the US at youth level. The former Saracens lock Hayden Smith signed for the New York Jets last year. Lawrence Okoye, who played rugby union at school and competed in the discus for Team GB at last year's Olympic Games, was signed by the San Francisco 49ers in April despite never having played a game of American football.

Carlin Isles, arguably the fastest man in rugby, switched from sprinting to Sevens last year and made an immediate impact with the U.S. national team. Maurice Clarett, a former star running back at Ohio State University, recently toyed with the idea of taking up Sevens.

"Overall if the Americans do it well, do it right just like they normally do, it could be one of the biggest leagues in the world. Obviously people have been saying this for a long time. My goal and my aims are very specific, that's to get this team up and running in the space of six weeks," said Paul. "It's going to be a hell of a challenge but I'm looking forward to it."