[dknightx]

stamina shouldn't be an issue. you would be surprised how well top 100m runners could do in a mile run. Also, its not difficult to work on stamina just focusing on it for an hour or two a day. (while the rest can be spent focusing on rugby skills, etc).

Also, how popular is rugby in other countries? Do the players there make a lot of money? What you are missing is that in the US, most of the BEST athletes in the country play in the NFL. I'm sure a lot of rugby teams have some good athletes, but is every player on the team a world class athlete? If the answer is yes, then the rugby players would have the advantage. Otherwise, 6 months is plenty of time to learn a new (very similar) sport ... but we ARE talking about football players here.