Rugby Union has scored a great coup over rugby league in the USA. At 3pm Chicago time the All Blacks vs USA kicked off in front of a 61,000 sellout crowd at the iconic Soldier's Field, watched by a national television audience on the free to air NBC network. Among the star players in the All Blacks team is Sonny Bill Williams.

This is why players like SBW and Samuel Burgess have crossed over to rugby union. They want to play big internationals in front of huge crowds.

Rugby league still does not have a permanent international office. Nigel Wood of Halifax acknowledges the weakness of rugby league's international program. But what is he doing about it? Keeping France weak by keeping Toulouse out of Super League is his idea of solving the problem!

Rugby league needs to have a non-parochial full time professional staff promoting the international game.

Rugby league needs to acknowledge the USARL, not the failed AMNRL, as the legitimate organization of rugby league in the USA.

Rugby league needs to have the RLIF hold the NRL and RFL accountable for progress in promoting the game in France, USA, Europe, the Middle East, and the South Pacific.

Incidentally, Sonny Bill Williams has scored the All Blacks 4th try. After 23 minutes All Blacks 26 USA 6.

Lots of Americans seeing how crap RU is, good thing!

Sonny Bill has run 50 meters, beating three men, to score his second try!

SBW getting a good talk up, the commentator even mentioned RL briefly!

Indeed! His second try was called "Walter Peytonesque" by the American commentator. Highest possible praise by an American. SBW is getting celebrity treatment. I worry that the NFL will recruit him and he won't come back to rugby league.

43-6 after 35 minutes.

The Yanks would love League if only we could get in front of them. Would love to get RL as a curtain raiser to the Super Bowl or something like that. Russell Crowe needs to broker some kind of deal to do an exhibition game. It's infuriating that those going there probably don't even know it's Union they're watching and that two codes actually exist...

Agreed. Crowe carries a lot of influence in the USA. However he needs something to work with. We need to recognize Spinner Howland's USARL as the sole organization, and get all rugby league clubs to fall in line behind it.

Second I think in the future we ought to hold a couple of rounds of the NRL and Super League played in the US, with the NRL and SL clubs based in major US cities. Promote the clubs as the club of that US city, and most important, have the subsequent regular NRL and SL games back in Australia and Europe shown on a free to air US TV channel (as of now it is only shown on FoxSoccerPlus, which is a subscription channel).

SBW was picked as MoM!

As I feared, they are talking about him as a future NFL player.

It's not, most Americans struggle to understand that RL and RU are different sports, they refer to both as just 'rugby' and their perception of the sport usually depends on which code they were exposed to first. Americans getting a good look at RU and seeing how bad it is is definitely not good for RL. On the other hand, RL could probably piggyback pretty effectively off any publicity or interest, although there is no RL presence in Chicago anyway so this whole thread is pretty irrelevant just like most of the threads created by this OP.