News that the proposed rugby league Test match in New York between Australia and Tonga has run into a hurdle (the up-front costs were explained to the promoter) begs the question: why play a rugby league Test match in New York in the first place?

On 18 July the NRL’s website gave us the following hot tip:

“The NRL has been exploring the possibility of taking the much-anticipated Test to the New York metropolitan area in October as the game looks to expand its global footprint on the back of a successful World Cup last year.

“In a move that highlights the NRL’s intention to increase awareness and participation in the world’s largest sporting market, the governing body has been working closely with a number of promoters to turn the idea into a reality.”

Australia coach Mal Meninga told Fairfax Media (now merged with Nine) that a New York Test would be a good thing not necessarily to “develop” rugby league in the United States, but rather to build rugby league’s “profile”.

What does “profile” mean? Press, appreciation and eyeballs on product. There could also be sales of green-and-gold merchandise and NRL subscriptions. Vision of the great thunder man, Jason Taumalolo, on ESPN’s Sportscenter could make NFL pundits and talent types wonder what might have been, and even what could still be.



Perhaps a cross-section of sports-watching Americans could differentiate one “rugby” from another. Dare to dream. That is all admirable, of course, even visionary. Go well, expansionist rugby league. And of course the NRL is up for it, it’s just that, like the billion-dollar stadiums they’d have built in Sydney, they don’t want to pay for it.

International rugby league evangelist, journalist and author, Steve Mascord – who once compared rugby league to Zimbabwean vacuum cleaners in terms of international appeal – no longer watches the NRL. Mascord is a man energised by growth markets, by nines tournaments and by rugby league’s tip-toe into North America.

“The big difference between now and any time since the [three month, 26 match] tour of Australia and New Zealand by the American All Stars in 1953, is that we have a professional team in North America, at least one more on the way, and the World Cup has been granted to Canada and North America. So the argument is not why are we doing these things but why aren’t we?”

Could it work? In 1987 State of Origin rugby league went to Long Beach, California, where Americans were asked what they thought of rugby league, and, by dint of that, what they thought of Australians. The telecast was two hours of cultural cringe, like doing tricks on your skateboard hoping to be noticed by the older, cooler kid at school.

In 2006, the North Melbourne Kangaroos played the Sydney Swans in a pre-season AFL exhibition in Los Angeles and sold-out the 3200-seat stadium Intra-Mural field at UCLA. John Travolta was there, Hugh Jackman and Olivia Newton-John. The point of it all, one assumes, was to develop a “footprint”. And yet, after a dozen years, and with a cult following of punters who grew up watching Aussie rules on late-night cable, the US has still only has four little leagues and one giant man in the ruck for the Pies, Mason Cox of Texas.

Point: American sports-watching culture – like our own – is entrenched. Yes, there’s a lot of Americans. And they’ll cock an eye at rugby league or Australian rules, or whatever curious, exotic entertainment is promoted down The Garden. But you can’t just plonk a sport in America and say: here we are! Consume us!



Consider it the other way around. Major League Baseball brought the LA Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks to the Sydney Cricket Ground in 2013. It was, having watched the game, one of the very coolest things you could see. The old SCG was decked out with all the bunting and the brown dirt of a diamond, the powerful throwing arms of the players and the foot-long, forty-dollar hot dogs were all there. It was all very different, very cool, and you could’ve gotten used to it.

But then it was gone. Did it shift Dodgers hats? Some. Was there a little sugar spike for the MLB Down Under? There was. But since? Nothing that there wasn’t already.

The same fellow who brought MLB to the SCG – Jason Moore of Moore Sports – took England and New Zealand to Denver. He will also event-manage the 2025 Rugby League World Cup in the US. He will need help. The NRL will provide all the talent, but it doesn’t mean they’re convinced pouring money into America is that sound an investment. The NRL is inward-looking. Not a criticism. The NRL is about the NRL. It’s their remit – national. They’d love international league to be a thing. But they won’t throw money at it.

Mascord asks: “Why is rugby league going to America without Jason Moore? The same guy who came up with ‘round zero’ [NRL matches in the USA in 2019] has been frozen out of that too? The NRL’s hubris in these ventures is dangerous and ill-advised.”

For Mascord what’s at stake is rugby league’s survival as anything like a mainstream sport outside Sydney and Brisbane. “Globalisation is as big a phenomenon in pro sports as anything else. A northern hemisphere presence that isn’t a collection of pit towns along the M62 is going to be essential in the long run. And they desperately need outside TV money here in England.”

The future? The NRL website says this: “The mid-season Test between England and New Zealand in Denver last month had mixed reviews, with the timing of the match in the middle of the NRL season the most common criticism.

“An end-of-season Test would allay most of the clubs’ fears. The one-off Origin game in Los Angeles in 1987 failed to gain any traction, however this [proposed New York Test] is part of a multi-year plan to grow the game in the United States.”

Mascord sees the future like this: “Two or three or four teams playing in the English leagues and Jason Moore coming good on his national comp [in the USA] with semi-professional teams.

“Unlike anything in the past, there is now a clear roadmap. I’ve been to three Toronto home games, I went to Denver and it’s a small piece of a very big pie that’s at stake.”

Good luck to them. But chances are America won’t know Jason Taumalolo from a vacuum salesman.