[hedgie43]

MT2R,

We have had some success in converting football players to rugby players. Dan Lyle, a linebacker from VMI, didn't take up the game until he was 24 and he became one of the best in the world at his position, winning the English Premiership's Player of the Year award in 1998. There are a few others like him, but it is completely dependent on the position. Some positions you need to have played for a long time so that the game comes naturally and so that you have the necessary skills, which take time to develop. Other positions are fairly easy to learn and those are the positions where American players have had the most success, as most of us don't grow up with the game.

As for physical edges, rugby takes much more fitness than football, although with enough time, football players should be able to get up to the right fitness levels. Rugby (union) has only been professional for 11 years now and in the early years of professionalism, American players definitely had an edge in terms of training and proper diet. Now, however, the training programs and diets of the players are very professional so that edge that we have has probably decreased. However, we as a country still produce some of the best athletes in the world and if we got the right guys to play rugby we would definitely be a power.

The Rugby World Cup is coming up next month and we will probably lose every game. We have a decent shot to beat Tonga and a very slim chance of beating Samoa. The others in our pool, South Africa and England, will slaughter us. But there is definitely hope for the future as USA Rugby is looking into getting more former college football players involved. In fact, USA Rugby is in discussions with Spike TV about making a rugby reality show (somewhat like the Ultimate Fighter) where former D1 college football players are trained in rugby and then they have some games and the standout players would be awarded contracts with the national team. Oh and if you want to watch some of the World Cup games, all of the USA games plus a few others will be tape delayed on Versus.