Nick Cain
World Cup USA is six and a half years away. Yet, outside the fraught situation World Rugby (IRB) faced in scheduling the 1995 tournament in South Africa when it was in a state of social and political flux, the world governing body has never taken a bigger risk in choosing a venue than awarding it to the Americans in 2031.
While rugby clubs like that at Yale University were established in the States as early as 1875, in the intervening 150 years it is a sport which has not impacted much on American sporting consciousness. The only exceptions were at the Olympics, first in 1920 (Ant...