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'The first couple of weeks, he didn't really say much. Until he'd played a game'

By Jamie Lyall
Ma'a Nonu (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Scott Murray’s carefully planned coaching voyage was bowling along nicely in the south of France, the former lock gaining his qualifications, cultivating contacts and looking after the forwards at Mont-de-Marsan where he finished his playing days, when wife Lisa delivered a stark message that brought the enterprise to an abrupt halt.

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Murray, for a time, was Scotland’s record caps holder and a 2001 Lion, a tremendous second-row whose international career spanned three World Cups and the Five Nations triumph of 1999.

But after nearly ten years in France, where he had played for Montauban, Castres and Mont-de-Marsan, California-born Lisa was yearning for home.

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“In France, they put me through all my coaching courses, they sent me to the National Centre of Rugby at Marcoussis, so I was lucky – and then I wasn’t lucky,” Murray tells RugbyPass.

“My wife said, ‘I’ve had enough of France, I want to leave’. I’m like, what? You’re drinking rose on a Tuesday afternoon and you want to leave?

“So yeah, I spent all this time learning French and making contacts to move to America where everyone speaks Spanish and I don’t know anyone. It was a tough transition.”

From working in the ProD2, Murray took a job in construction, coaching amateur and college teams in Santa Monica before finding a route into the inaugural Major League Rugby as forwards coach of San Diego Legion two years ago.

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The 2020 season, running from February to June, was abandoned as coronavirus spread across the States, but for next term, the Scot has been promoted to the top job, which he will share with former American international Zack Test.

The competition is beginning to blossom, with crowds growing, new teams arriving in Los Angeles and Dallas taking the league’s cohort to 13, and serious veteran talent lured across the Atlantic by the unique lifestyle and the smell of fresh opportunity.

Chris Robshaw, the former England captain, has signed for San Diego next season and represents a monumental capture. Murray hopes to bring back the colossal All Blacks centre Ma’a Nonu for a second spell in 2021 after the two-time World Cup winner made a profound impact in this year’s truncated campaign, while Australian international Paddy Ryan and Italy lock Josh Furno have also played influential roles.

“Ma’a Nonu could make what he makes here in a month in France easily. The money isn’t brilliant; we understand they are coming here under their market value,” Murray says.

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“For Chris, it’s the lifestyle thing, and also he doesn’t want to be playing 40 games a year. That’s a huge pull here – we’ve got a 16-game season, plus he gets to experience something else.

Chris Robshaw
(Photo by Steve Bardens/Getty Images for Harlequins)

“San Diego is awesome, the weather is brilliant, the beach is brilliant, and the club culture and atmosphere is very good. It has to be for someone like Ma’a Nonu to want to come back.

“We try and make it attractive to come and play here, but we want all of our players to grow as people as well. California is quite out-there, they’re big into meditation and yoga and health drinks and breathing techniques underwater, recovery days and barbecues on the beach, a lot of things you wouldn’t find back home that we can actually go and do.

“We’ve got the big Marine base here, Miramar [the site of the real Top Gun], and we’re trying to form relationships with these places. If you’re talking about stress, I don’t think there’s a more stressful job than a jet fighter, so we try to get these guys in to do talks and get the guys out to the base to see what the Marines go through on Hell Week.”

Naturally, signing one of the game’s true greats had a transformative effect on the young Americans in San Diego’s squad. They feasted on the wisdom of Nonu, an All Blacks centurion whose CV is festooned with silverware.

MLR 2020 cancelled Nonu
Ma’a Nonu (Photo by Stuart Walmsley/Getty Images)

“Some American guys don’t know how to be a professional rugby player – they never have been,” Murray says. “When I first arrived in America, the whole ethos was whenever, however, whatever. You could be changing at the side of a field, or taking your own car to get to games.

“Analysis-wise, all that stuff he’s been doing for years as second nature, he’s now showing those guys how to do it, how do you see what your opposition is doing, how do you know what type of player he is, whether he steps off his left or right foot, how do you look after your body, how do you switch off and on. A lot of these American kids are constantly on and get burned out.

“The first couple of weeks, he didn’t really say much. He worked his ass off to get his bronco, worked his ass off to hit his test results. Until he’d played a game, he didn’t really say much to the team.

San Diego Legion
Scott Murray (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

“Once he’d played that first game and played well, he came out of his shell. For a man of his calibre to come in and make sure he was where he needed to be before he told other people what to do was outstanding. Then he started to open up, he took some meetings, played some really good rugby and was very, very good for our team.”

For an age now, rugby has grappled with how best to crack America, and unlock even a modicum of its vast sporting riches. An engaged and hungry American rugby scene could yield critical revenue and a massive new market. It might also deliver bright thinking on how to run a game often accused of crusty reticence to change with greater vibrancy.

Nobody has quite managed to make it all happen yet, but the MLR clearly has legs, and the hope is that its steady growth represents the first tangible footsteps on the journey.

“Get the kids involved and get it on TV – those are your two keys for America,” Murray says. “If you get young kids in now, further down the line there will be more interest, more players, more spectators. We’re in the process, I’ve heard, of signing a TV deal which would be huge.

“When I first arrived here, we were getting 2,000 people a game. Last season, for the last few games, we were getting 6-7,000. It’s already started. But we’ve got to concentrate on getting the young ones in.

“With the concussion stigma around American football, a lot of people are going towards rugby as a contact sport. The high school and kids rugby here in San Diego is very good, there are a lot of kids playing.

“We send a couple of players to each high school as coaches, just to get the Legion name out there, but also to get these kids excited about rugby. Zack does seminars with coaches, we’re trying to help as much as we can, and it’s all gratis, trying to grow the game and get people involved as much as we can.”

The MLR has drawn significant intrigue from afar, with Murray finding established coaches in Europe are just as eager to hear about his experiences as he is to lap up their insights. He has used the enforced suspension of rugby as an opportunity to learn from as many people as he can. There have been Zoom calls with Stuart Lancaster in Ireland and Mick Byrne, the kicking specialist, as well as old pals from Scotland in Nathan Hines and Roddy Grant.

He knows that one day, years down the track, he may have to leave America to realise his coaching ambitions, but he cherishes his life in San Diego. Earlier this month, Lisa gave birth to their second child, and there is a precious opportunity for him to flourish with the competition.
“If there’s a better job in America, I couldn’t tell you what it is,” he says. “If there’s a better place to live and play rugby, I couldn’t tell you where it is.

“I just thank my lucky stars I got in here and I’m doing what I’m doing. I will stay here as long as I can, but I want to grow as a coach, and maybe there are opportunities to go somewhere for a week, or get involved with some USA Eagles stuff. But this is just getting started over here and it’s going to grow very, very quickly.”

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J
Jon 6 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

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j
john 9 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

But here in Australia we were told Penney was another gun kiwi coach, for the Tahs…….and yet again it turned out the kiwi coach was completely useless. Another con job on Australian rugby. As was Robbie Deans, as was Dave Rennie. Both coaches dumped from NZ and promoted to Australia as our saviour. And the Tahs lap them up knowing they are second rate and knowing that under pressure when their short comings are exposed in Australia as well, that they will fall in below the largest most powerful province and choose second rate Tah players to save their jobs. As they do and exactly as Joe Schmidt will do. Gauranteed. Schmidt was dumped by NZ too. That’s why he went overseas. That why kiwi coaches take jobs in Australia, to try and prove they are not as bad as NZ thought they were. Then when they get found out they try and ingratiate themselves to NZ again by dragging Australian teams down with ridiculous selections and game plans. NZ rugby’s biggest problem is that it can’t yet transition from MCaw Cheatism. They just don’t know how to try and win on your merits. It is still always a contest to see how much cheating you can get away with. Without a cheating genius like McCaw, they are struggling. This I think is why my wise old mate in NZ thinks Robertson will struggle. The Crusaders are the nursery of McCaw Cheatism. Sean Fitzpatrick was probably the father of it. Robertson doesn’t know anything else but other countries have worked it out.

35 Go to comments
A
Adrian 10 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

Thanks Nick The loss of players to OS, injury and retirement is certainly not helping the Crusaders. Ditto the coach. IMO Penny is there to hold the fort and cop the flak until new players and a new coach come through,…and that's understood and accepted by Penny and the Crusaders hierarchy. I think though that what is happening with the Crusaders is an indicator of what is happening with the other NZ SRP teams…..and the other SRP teams for that matter. Not enough money. The money has come via the SR competition and it’s not there anymore. It's in France, Japan and England. Unless or until something is done to make SR more SELLABLE to the NZ/Australia Rugby market AND the world rugby market the $s to keep both the very best players and the next rung down won't be there. They will play away from NZ more and more. I think though that NZ will continue to produce the players and the coaches of sufficient strength for NZ to have the capacity to stay at the top. Whether they do stay at the top as an international team will depend upon whether the money flowing to SRP is somehow restored, or NZ teams play in the Japan comp, or NZ opts to pick from anywhere. As a follower of many sports I’d have to say that the organisation and promotion of Super Rugby has been for the last 20 years closest to the worst I’ve ever seen. This hasn't necessarily been caused by NZ, but it’s happened. Perhaps it can be fixed, perhaps not. The Crusaders are I think a symptom of this, not the cause

35 Go to comments
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