In England, we have Rugby Union (and Rugby League), but in the United States, such games are quite alien.
They have Gridiron, or American Football, which feels much like Rugby, but with more padding and excruciatingly long advert breaks.
That said, Rugby Union chiefs would doubtless love some of the passion American sports fans have for their sport; Super Bowl Sunday is a national event where the entire country stops and watches. It’s a spectacle with halftime shows from megastars. If you’re struggling to imagine it, think Ed Sheeran and Elton John duetting during the halftime of Leicester Tigers’ win against Saracens in June.
It feels far-fetched, and rarely do the world of Rugby and American Football collides, but an interesting moment in 1998 took our game to a record number of US homes. That moment was an episode of the hit sitcom Friends, titled The One With All The Rugby. To understand how culturally important the moment was, you must understand how big the show got in the late nineties.
Friends is still a cultural icon, as demonstrated by the reunion show last year, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. At its peak, popular shows could easily drag in more than 30 million viewers, according to TV Over Mind, with The One After The Super Bowl attracting 52 million. It also spawned various games and digital media, including a Friends trivia game for the PlayStation 2 titled Friends: The One With All The Trivia. You can also find a Friends-inspired online Slingo game on Foxy Games called Friends Slingo, which features the theme tune and branding. Today, there’s even an app, Friends 25, for fans who miss their favourite New York 30-somethings.
That means it was big news when they dropped some Rugby into a show. They’d already had the episode after a Super Bowl, and they’d played some American Football on an episode, but Rugby? Never, despite The Sports Room asserting the two were close in many respects.
How was Rugby used in the context of Friends? Typically, it was all about Englishness. Ross, played by David Schwimmer, was dating an English girl called Emily, played by Helen Baxendale. Much was made of the clash of English and American in the show, right up to their wedding (where Ross says the wrong name at the altar), but it was Rugby they used to really strike a contrast.
Ross was asked to play a game of Rugby in a local New York park but a group of Emily’s Friends, and predictably he wasn’t very good. Free of the padding and protection of American Football, he found himself battered in a scrum and clueless about the game. Half time saw him call Rugby ‘one fun game’ before almost collapsing.
The humour came when Emily could point out some of the other player’s weak spots, resulting in Ross earning their respect by matching them in the game. In the end, Emily even tells him about a weakness a player on his team has, as she wants him to earn maximum respect.
Did the show help drive Rugby Union in America? It can’t have hurt, especially as the now-defunct Rugby Super League started in 1997, and you have to wonder if that was partly why it was written into the script. The American Rugby team failed to qualify for the 1995 Rugby World Cup, so popularity was at an all-time low, but they were at the 1999 tournament in Wales. Sadly, despite the similarities between American Football and Rugby, they’ve never progressed from a pool in the tournament and are currently ranked 12th in the world.
Ross Geller is no longer on our screens, nor are any of the Friends group, but among all of the accolade, praise and exposure they’ve had, they can also claim to have been one of the most successful American shows ever to leverage Rugby in a scene, and for that, all Rugby fans should salute them.