Coach Heineken, Malcolm X, Seth Smith, and Houston’s global model for growth
The SaberCats' South African influence was too much for my transcription app but it points to perennial questions about MLR, ahead of Saturday's Championship Game
As a reporter who never learned shorthand, in large part because he went into journalism via a couple of arts degrees and rugby reports for the student paper composed through a fug of head-knocks and beer, the advent of the transcription app affected my writing career rather like the advent of line-out lifting changed my rugby fortunes.
Without either, I’d be nothing. I was a particularly lumpen second row forward but once lifting negated the need to be able to actually jump, I made it to a couple of games for a Premiership 2nd XV, the height of my rugby career. After transcription apps negated the need for shorthand, I became able to at least cope as a quick-turn reporter, whether at post-match presser or on the press bench at the supreme court.
Just as a lifter can lose his grip and drop his lock on his head, so no app is safe from error. Transcriptions must be checked. A miss can be serious, particularly on politics. That said, the more ludicrous errors make collectors’ items. Surreal beauties done to my interviews include “Tie Rack and Grandstand” (“Iraq and Afghanistan”); “Mouse hole” (“Mosul”); “Dachshundville” and “Dr Phil” (“Jacksonville”) in the same piece; and, best of all, “Downton Abbey” (“Donald’s an idiot”).
This week, thanks to a Guardian conversation with Seth Smith, the exciting 20-year-old Houston SaberCats hooker, ahead of the MLR Championship Game against the New England Free Jacks, I added to that collection. I asked Smith about how he came to be the youngest player ever to play MLR. Describing his happy disbelief when offered his first SaberCats deal, he said, according to the app:
“Coach Heineken? Being told by a guy like that, that for a 17-year-old, my body looked physically ready to play? Him telling me he helped Andre Pollard and Malcolm X, helped find those people and get them started and helped grow them to who they are today? I couldn’t believe it.”
That would be Coach Heyneke Meyer, the former Springbok boss who led Houston till last year; Handre Pollard, the World Cup-winning fly-half until recently with Leicester Tigers; and Malcolm Marx, the fearsome Bok hooker who plies his trade in Japan.
Still, they were easy fixes, and I got to spend a few happy minutes considering whether history would’ve been different had the man then known as Malcolm Little tried rugby instead of boxing in prison: the sort of thing that keeps me happy.
Which is all a long-winded way of getting to the point, which is touched on in the Guardian piece I’m trailing: what Smith’s rapid rise might tell us about the best way to develop American rugby talent.
At the start of the MLR season, I spoke to Chris Dunlavey and Paul Sheehy of Old Glory DC, about their attempts to construct the most American squad in the league, to help develop domestic talent and strengthen the national team.
At the end of the MLR season, I spoke to Smith, a young American learning his game in a squad containing a wealth of South African talent – as names like Louritz van der Schyff (center), Marno Redelinghuys and Johan Momsen (both lock or back row) suggest – as well as experienced players from places like Brazil, Britain, and Fiji, and a good helping of homegrown talent.
Which model is better, or should be pursued, is a question as old as MLR. Should teams field mostly Americans, in service of the national team, or should they field mostly imported talent, in service of their own business and that of the league – to play attractive rugby, to attract paying spectators, and, most importantly, to win?
One argument against the first model might be made after looking at the struggles of Anthem RC, the North Carolina team formed last year to boost domestic talent but now coming off the back of a second winless season, 0 & 32 overall.
For the Guardian this week, I also spoke to Nic Benson, the MLR commissioner, ahead of his big championship weekend in Providence, Rhode Island. Here’s what Nic said when I asked him about the Anthem experiment:
Listen, I think that if you look at the goals for what we set out to do with Anthem, it was to get young American players more game time and exposure at a higher level. In that respect, it's been a win. I think there are more Anthem players on the Eagles squad than there are representatives from any other team, which is a good sign.
Do I wish they had won a couple games? Of course I do, and God knows, they had a couple heartbreakers early in the season. It's hard for me to say that I wish they'd won a specific game, as you understand. But I think it's serving its purpose.
I think the quality of play in MLR has continued to grow. Honestly, the level of rugby has grown faster than I think any of us expected. It's been the one area of growth that's far, far, far outpaced expectations. I think for those young, young men to get exposure at that level is what it's about. And they're getting it.
Conversely, an argument against the second model, fielding mostly foreigners, might be made by looking at the US Eagles’ failure to qualify for the last World Cup, a disastrous sequence in which a series of chances to seal the deal were passed up by a team which seemed to lose direction when pressure really came on.
Here’s what Benson said about teams that field more foreigners, in the context of Smith’s emergence with Houston:
You always have to strike a balance, right? You want to have the foreign players taking minutes, but you have sort of a learning experience for the Americans, I think, especially where you have really seasoned professionals who lead by example.
And that this is true, by the way, in any sport, right? You have the seasoned veteran who kind of shows the younger players what it means to be a professional in terms of eating habits, training, discipline, all of those things. That's a critical component. You see it in Chicago. You see it in San Diego. You see it in Houston. And you know this: you always play your best rugby games when you're playing next to a player who's just at a higher level than you.”
That I can confirm. The two games I had for a Premiership 2nd XV were for West Hartlepool, in autumn 1998. West were doing an Anthem, in their case soon to plummet out of the professional game altogether. Short of a second row forward, some coaches came down to Durham University training and asked if they could borrow one from the 1st XV. Durham said no, but they could have that lump Pengelly from the 2nds. Beggars not being choosers, West took him.
On the Saturday, scared shitless, I showed up for the bus down to Leeds. Onboard, I found I would be packing down with Mark Giacheri: a Sydney-born giant who already had plenty of caps for Italy and would end up with 48 before a spell coaching San Francisco Golden Gate. Looking around the bus, I saw seasoned professionals, a schoolboy international fly-half, a couple of enormous taciturn Tongans. On the field, looking up at Giacheri, I reasoned I had no choice but to play out of my skin.
I did — and West asked me back the next week. I managed to play well again, against Blaydon, and West asked if I’d like to stay with the squad. Turning to the great philosophers — Clint Eastwood, “A man‘s got to know his limitations” — I said thanks, but no thanks. West duly went down. Knocked out of university rugby by a knock-out — the back of a Newcastle hooker’s head, my face, a delayed swoon into dining-hall custard — I belatedly focused on my degree, and did well enough to get the journalism job I craved.
So in the end … I don’t know which MLR model I prefer, homegrown first or foreign talent to bring on the locals. Probably a mixture, and if that’s a cop-out I do know Seth Smith is hugely exciting, learning fast from his big Bokke buddies, and I’ll be eager to see how he goes in the Championship Game, against New England in their own multi-national glory. I won’t be supporting either team — whatever the glorious example of the Free Jacks and their proper hooped jerseys — but I will be supporting the league.
Further reading:
‘Super-physical’: Houston’s Seth Smith points to US rugby future – and MLR decider, MP, Guardian
‘He transformed his mind’: how did Malcolm Little become Malcolm X?,
MP, Guardian
‘Rugby is growing’: Old Glory DC owners bullish as MLR hits year eight,
MP, Guardian
Major League Rugby faces a pandemic – and corrosive politics, MP, Guardian
US rugby in despair after World Cup flop but Eagles insist on signs of hope,
MP, Guardian