Hall's battle to set the Eagles soaring

Gerard Wright in Denver says the US has the talent to surprise the world

In an earlier life, Duncan Hall was a physical education teacher and Wallaby lock in 15 Tests. If he wanted to spend extra time on training, he took leave without pay. Tours and Tests were somehow squeezed into his annual holiday allotment. The Australian team's preparation for an inter-national was a three-day training camp. All of this cost him money, but who could put a price on playing for your country? That was in 1980.

Duncan Hall is now coach of the USA Eagles team who will play England in a one-off Test in San Francisco next weekend. With the exception of four who play professionally in England, France and Italy, the Eagles' squad members will have taken time from work for this week's training camp, just as they did for the recent Pan-American series of Tests against Canada, Argentina and Uruguay. The Eagles' heirsand successors, the USA Under-19 team, recently committed $5,000 each to play in the world under-19 championships in Chile.

This is rugby's Third World. Hall, a former coach at Worcester and Leicester with Bob Dwyer and also a Queensland Rugby Union director of coaching, has been its figurehead since the start of last year. With that position, he swapped the sense of entitlement that is part of rugby in its developed world ­ "Kids in Australia wouldn't pay that much [$5,000] to represent Australia, let alone pay to go to a tournament" ­ for the sense of commitment that is now a relic of the game elsewhere.

It has been a bumpy ride for Hall and his team. Before last month's victory over Uruguay, the Eagles had lost eight matches in a row. They are a team who had to learn to crawl before they could walk, figuratively, and, to a certain extent, literally. Consider Hall's first training sessions with his new team. "When we got together last year, we spent a lot of time on basics: passing and catching," he recalls.

Beyond the obvious difficulties, Hall sees other challenges, each time he sees his 11-year-old son. "He just loves rugby; wants to sleep with his footy, watches videos of games. That passion doesn't hit people in America until they're in their 20s, in most cases. There's a whole lot of time that's just missed."

This difference in cultures can be measured at international level by the speed of a step or a thought ­ the difference between what is instinctive and what has been learnt. "They can do the things they know about doing," Hall said of American players. "But when you have two guys, and one of them has ball sense, you can see the difference."

It's not that they don't have the horses. By Hall's estimate, there are more registered rugby players across the United States than there are in Australia.

But the key word is across. In a country with a population of 280 million, clubs are scattered the length and breadth of the nation, with seasons and raucous, riotous tournaments that span 10 months of the year, but only rarely coincide, from region to region. The nation's top domestic competition, for instance, the Rugby Super League, starts play in late March, with its final last weekend in Chicago.

If, as Hall suggests, improvement occurs with repeated exposure to high-level competition, the Eagles, for the most part, are badly disadvantaged. Hall cites the examples of England captain Martin Johnson, who, he estimates, would play 46 to 50 matches a year, and then an Australian who might play 25 Super 12 and Test matches over the same period. Their American equivalent would play no more than a dozen games.

When they arrive at Balboa Park, San Francisco, next weekend, the English team will eye the familiar figure of Dan Lyle, the Bath No 8 and Eagles captain, and the towering image of Luke Gross, the 30-year-old former basketball player now folding his 6ft 9in into the scrum at lock, and wonder why a country with so many wondrous athletes cannot produce more players of international standard.

By way of reply, Hall will point to Shaun Paga, a brilliant flanker in the University of California's all-conquering rugby team, and also a revelation as a defensive end with Cal's gridiron team. Paga's performances in pads and helmet have earned him paid try-outs with the Minnesota Vikings of the NFL. "It's a tough road," Hall said of recruiting and, more importantly, keeping such players. "I can fully appreciate why American players would play professional sport, because you can get a free education out of it."

But perhaps the greatest drawback the game faces in America is that identified by Lyle in an interview two years ago. Through the early and mid-Nineties, the Eagles' skipper believed, his team had been slowly catching up with their more established international rivals. Then the game turned professional, and the best rugby players in America were made to look like what they essentially were, part-timers.

Hall agrees, but, lest anyone feel the Eagles are alone in this position, suggests the disparity is far more widespread.

"In reality, and whether we like it or not, four teams have taken off: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and England. But the teams in the rest of the world ­ the Pacific islands, the secondary European countries, America ­ we are all looking for funds just to play matches, let alone pay guys."