This summer, the French capital played host to the Summer Olympic Games for the third time, only the second city to do so after London (in 1908, 1948 and 2012), and with Los Angeles set to become the third in 2028 (previously hosting in 1932 and 1984).
Paris was also host to the 2nd Olympic Games in 1900 and to the 8th Olympics in 1924, two of only four summer Olympic Games (along with those in 1908 and 1920) at which the sport of rugby union was played. It was in Paris – one hundred years ago this year – that the United States became the last ever winners of the gold medal in men’s rugby union. Yes, that’s right, the US are the reigning Olympic champions in men’s rugby union…
Now, before someone points out that rugby featured at this year’s Olympics in Paris, the sport at this year’s Olympics is rugby sevens, which is a very different version of the game (with 7-a-side rather than 15, for a start), which was introduced in 2016 at Rio (and with France and New Zealand now reigning men’s and women’s Olympic champions respectively).
In 2024, both the United States men’s and women’s teams qualified to take part, among the 12 nations qualified in each competition and the women secured an impressive bronze medal. In 1924, only three men’s teams took part: those of the US, France and Romania (so a medal was inevitably on the cards...). The United States were the reigning gold medalists from the Antwerp Olympics in 1920 (where only two teams competed) and, after the US and the hosts dispatched the Romanians with ease, all eyes fell upon the decisive clash between the US and France (a rematch of 1920).
In 1924, the French team, playing at home, were clear favourites. The largely French crowd at the match – taking place on 18 May (a couple of months prior to the main Olympic sports) – did not react well. The Washington DC Evening Star reported the following day that the US team were met by a ‘partisan crowd, which hissed the visiting players and watched the raising of the American flag in cold silence, broken only by boos and catcalls’. Indeed, the paper went on to report that two Americans were carried unconscious from the stadium following a series of brawls that broke out. Nevertheless, the US played fiercely and saw off their opponents, winning by a clear 17-3 margin.
But why were the US playing (and winning) Olympic rugby in the 1924 games anyway? Well, for that, we need to look back to 1905-1906, which helps us then link back to the foundations of rugby in the US back in 1874…
Many [American] football fans will know that in 1905 there was a football crisis, where it looked like college football might be under threat of extinction following a backlash against the sheer number of injuries and – no exaggeration – fatalities. College leaders called for significant reforms to the game, or even its abolition. On 26 November the Chicago Tribune, reported dramatically: ‘Record Shows That Nineteen Players Have Been Killed; One Hundred Thirty-seven Hurt. TWO ARE SLAIN SATURDAY.’ The crisis led to the intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt and a series of rule changes in the sport of football followed, including the most-significant of these: the introduction of the forward pass in 1906. With football so radically transformed in 1906, it was now a very distant cousin of the rugby from which it evolved.
Yet, while East Coast colleges broadly accepted the new rules and regulations, Californian colleges decided to adopt mainstream rugby union rules instead, given that widespread fatalities and serious injuries were not being recorded in the UK at the time. As the Wilmington Every Evening put it on 29 September 1906, ‘it is interesting that the English Rugby game, from which the American game was evolved, is finding some favor here, and has been adopted by the California colleges’. As a result, California remained an outpost of college rugby on the West Coast, providing the vast bulk of the players for the 1920 and 1924 Olympic squads. Not long after, though, the main Californian colleges decided to fall in line with the rest of the nation and play football instead.
The second anniversary that 2024 links to is that of the first intercollegiate rugby game in the United States, back in 1874. It was 1874 that saw a team from McGill University in Montreal travel down to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to play a game a rugby against Harvard. It was a dull 0-0 tie, but there is more to it than that…
Despite the lack of scoring, Harvard were keen on this imported game and soon replaced their existing rules with the more exciting rugby rules. Over the years that followed, other colleges – keen to play Harvard – also adopted the code, becoming the default code at the elite universities that were, in this period, the leading lights in college sports.
The one holdout on the conversion to rugby was Yale, which finally relented in 1880, when it was agreed that the number of players would be reduced to 11 (from 15) to reflect Yale’s preference. With Yale (under the famous Walter Camp), Harvard, Princeton and Columbia leading the way, it was a form of gradually tweaked 11-a-side rugby that came to be the default [American] football all the way to 1905 and the football crisis.
So, 2024, sees a double anniversary for rugby in the United States. It was 150 years ago that the first intercollegiate rugby union game took place in America at Harvard, and 100 years ago that the United States became the last nation to win a game of 15-a-side rugby at the Olympic Games in Paris. So, remember that the US women’s bronze this summer was not the start, but part of a long tradition in a sport that – for many in America – still barely registers. Let's hope that Team USA's success this summer brings about a resurgence of interest in the US!
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