Expansion, Gain in Popularity and Grass Roots Development
Although the 'heartland' of rugby league is the north east coast, the AMNRL is quickly expanding to other areas of the eastern coast, as well as this, efforts are being made to set up a west coast competition.
In 2006, a new team joined the AMNRL from Boston, which played an exhibition match in 2005. Teams from New Haven (Connecticut) and Jacksonville (Florida) also joined the 2006 competition. A Chicago team is also going through various stages of development with possible inclusion in the AMNRL in the future.
Florida has hosted rugby league games in the past, the state was the host to 1999 North Pacific Qualification Tournament, where the USA beat both Japan and Canada to meet Lebanon for the right to play in the 2000 Rugby League World Cup. Orlando's ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex hosted the Tomahawks's test against England, for the latter's 2000 World Cup warm up game. It ended 110-0 to the away team. In 2001, Florida was also host to the Sunshine State Challenge, where the United States competed against the Huddersfield Giants, Halifax and the Leeds Rhinos, the miniature tournament drew a crowd of 6,700.
In 2005, an exhibition match was played in Phoenix, Arizona to help promote rugby league outside the heartland. Plans are underway to start a west coast competition called the WAMNRL, it has announced kickoff date of Summer 2011 with teams from Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Phoenix, Arizona, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Denver, as well as Vancouver, Canada.
In November 2010 the USA announced a strategic plan to grow the sport in the country with grass roots development, expansion and world cup qualification in sight.
Read more about this topic: Rugby League In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words gain, popularity, grass, roots and/or development:
“Throughout the 1980’s, we did hear too much about individual gain and the ethos of selfishness and greed. We did not hear enough about how to be a good member of a community, to define the common good and to repair the social contract. And we also found that while prosperity does not trickle down from the most powerful to the rest of us, all too often indifference and even intolerance do.”
—Hillary Rodham Clinton (b. 1947)
“A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of “spirit” over matter.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“She shall get a duke, my dear,
As duck do get a drake;
And she shall have a young prince,
For her own fair sake.”
—Unknown. Green Grass (l. 9–12)
“If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they’d realise that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“John B. Watson, the most influential child-rearing expert [of the 1920s], warned that doting mothers could retard the development of children,... Demonstrations of affection were therefore limited. “If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning.””
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)