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I saw that on the NRL US site. You're getting around mate.
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Source: Shevington Sharks USA Tour booklet 1981
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[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]LUCIUS BANKS was born in Arlington, Mass, in 1899 and was a graduate from the famous West Point Military Academy. How he came to be playing rugby for Hunslet in January 1923 is anyones guess but old Lucius was probably the first American to play Rugby League football. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Records show that since Banks, only a handful of Americans have played Rugby League professionally which is surprising when one considers the similarities with American grid-iron football. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Many have recognised these similarities and for several years now a succession of people have sought to introduce Rugby League with its tough man-to-man confrontations, ball handling skills and free running movements to a public which delights in the rough-and-tumble spectacle of American grid-iron. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Typically, one of the first men to take the pioneering role of introducing Rugby League to the Americans was that Australian man of many parts, Harry Sunderland. It was Harry Sunderland who, in 1929, had first interested the French in Rugby League. Having seen that particular dream become a reality, Sunderland, with his characteristic enthusiasm, set his sights on converting the Americans to Rugby League football.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]America was a country that he had come to know well after he had covered the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics as a freelance journalist. Harry Sunderland became friends with Californian journalist and sporting entrepreneur Ward B. Nash who had earlier staged a Rugby Union match at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Nash was excited by the prospect of Rugby League in the U.S. With Sunderland and restaurant owner Cliff Evans, the Welsh international and later coach with St. Helens and Salford who was living in California, he set out plans which would mean the staging of exhibition games played in Los Angeles by international Rugby League sides returning home from overseas tours. The plans, unfortunately, failed to materialise.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The interest created brought to prominence the name of Mike Dimitro. Dimitro was a professional wrestler and ex-gridiron star. He had watched Rugby League in Australia and New Zealand whilst serving in the U.S. Navy during the war and in 1952 he announced his intention of assembling a number of American football players who would form a U.S. touring side to Australia and New Zealand. He convinced New South Wales R.L. President H. (Jersey) Flegg that he had sufficient backing to finance the project and the Australians agreed to the tour. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Australian Rugby League press was sceptical to the point where Dimitro was labeled a liar and a con-man who only saw Rugby League as a means to line his own pockets, but Dimitro was determined to see things through and the United States All Stars Rugby League team was chosen and set off for Australia in May 1953 with Dimitro as their captain and coach. None of the side had ever played the game in their lives and the only preparation they made for the tour was to read the rule book. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The enterprise was not the financial disaster that many had forecast. The Americans proved to be attractive, though grossly inexperienced, visitors. Attendance during their 18 match itinerary in Australia averaged 13,000 with 65,453 people at the Cricket Ground when they were beaten 52-25 by Sydney. They won 3 and drew 2 matches, scoring 406 points against 560. In New Zealand they won four out of eight, scoring 157 points and conceding 211.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Nothing further was heard of Mike Dimitro after the tourists returned home and that was the end of the American All Stars, although one of the touring team, Al Kirkman, came to England to eventually sign for Leeds in 1957. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Enter Ross Rosie Gilhansan, another Californian. Gilhansan, a dynamic promoter was the next to have the vision of Rugby League as an All-American sport. It was 1954, the year of the first Rugby League World Cup competition played in France. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Gilhansan persuaded the Australian and New Zealand R.L. authorities to break their homeward journeys in Los Angeles after the World Cup to play an exhibition match for which he would raise the money to stage the event. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The experiment received the full support of the British League who were even persuaded to put money into the pot, but this was another ill fated venture. Four days before the game at Long Beach, the worst fog for years descended over the Pacific sea­board and remained to engulf the stadium on match day. A vain attempt was made to entertain the 1,000 curious spectators but after 6 farcical minutes during which time no-one, not even the players themselves, could see more than a few yards, the match was called off. It was decided to try again the following day. This time the match was completed with Australia beating the New Zealanders by 30 points to 13 in front of 4,554 spectators who were lost in the vast Coliseum Bowl built to accommodate crowds of 100,000 plus. The experiment had been a flop and there was no further interest shown in the United States for more than 20 years.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]It started again when Wisconsin business man Mike Mayer saw the film This Sporting Life on television. This British kitchen-sink drama with a Rugby League background can hardly be said to glamourise the game but Mayer was hooked. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]He became the next man to recognise the marketable potential of Rugby League football in American sport. He set up the United States Rugby League with himself as its President, his aim, to obtain the financial backing of the R.L. playing nations and to sell franchises for twelve professional teams in major cities across the States. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]After nearly four years, the big kick-off has yet to take place. If only it could happen for Mike Mayer then there are many who predict that the U.S. would be the springboard to send Rugby League soaring as an international sport. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Meanwhile, English-born Al Eastwood and his band of helpers in Portland, Oregon have made their mark with the formation of the North West Rugby League In 1979. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Could this be the way that Rugby League is going to get a foot-hold in the United Statesthrough an amateur movement? Where the game is the thing, and not the big dollar sign. It is the old grass roots theory. Now, growth is the keyword for those amateurs who could yet succeed in launching Rugby League in the U.S.A. where so many others have failed previously. [/FONT]
What sums up American Rugby for me was a moment on the TV show 'Friends' years ago.
Apart from a small handfull of games a year, soccer doesn't get on network TV here. Without the breaks, how do you propose they can accomodate the standard 12 minutes of advertising per hour the networks have in ever other sport they show?
The answer to his question, "Which code offers all of the things they like about football, yet is more easily understood by the uninitiated?" is a no-brainer. RL is by far the easier version of rugby for American football fans to understand.
