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AN American college tight end who was signed by an NFL franchise last year will reportedly join the Brumbies next month.
According to a report in the Arizona Republic, Chris Coyle will travel to Canberra in the next few weeks “to live and train with the Brumbies, a highly successful rugby franchise located 90 miles south of Sydney”.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/sport/rugby/n...-1227313168902
seems like a great untapped resource. so competitive in the US. huge numbers of players that don't make the cut. if we can attract 1% of these blokes then it would be a success. Hope this bloke chris can make a go of it and he enjoys his time here in australia.
At 1.91m and 110 kg, he sounds like a back-rower to me. The trouble with NFL is it teaches players to do one thing really well; not lots of things adequately. There's lots to learn to be a flanker/8, although I'd have said tight end is one of the more adaptable positions in NFL (you have to be able to both block and catch) and Coyle was also a running back, so could be a powerful runner. Nice to see someone taking a punt on converting a failed NFL player. If it works you could see a lot more teams taking a look at guys for the training camp or WTG
If he was in a kiwi team he would be played anywhere, big boppers all across the park. :P
Backrow seems obvious but could just as easily play centre if her can run straight and hard and hold onto the ball in contact ala SBW or nonu, plus make less tackles and would not need to know as much of the technical stuff at the breakdown.
i was also thinking of a big centre. or a bollucking winger.
Any sustained involvement in the breakdown would be a mystery to an NFL player who hasnt got a rugby background. for that matter, tackling would require some re-thinking, but no more than an NRL player without rugby experience.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbasimplex
I think we'd want wide receivers who have a high YAC stat to play wing or any ball returner off the special teams unit as a fullback, since the skillset is pretty similar.
Running backs would make handy crashballers and a safety/cornerback would do pretty nicely in the midfield.
I can't think of many linemen who would do really well in rugby. A DT is probably running in excess of 250 lb these days, you would look for a guy that size to play prop, but the blokes in NFL with the closest skillset would be the defensive linemen and those guys run at over 300, they are lightning over 40 metres, but really need a break after a few minutes and wouldn't have the stamina to play rugby.
So all-in-all I think you could make some finds in the backline, but there are a lot of things to pick up in the pack, some sort of rugby background would be essential.
I wonder if USARugby have considered playing their rugby in the summer to make use of the Gridiron off-season and market it as cross-training. They could easily pick up some brilliant talent by running introductory leagues using this sort of a model to help players overcome the various differences in the games.
It does occasionally happen at college level on an individual basis (probably not as much as it used to) but it's hard to picture NFL teams allowing it.Quote:
Originally Posted by GIGS20
USA Rugby's strategy now is getting kids through the Rookie Rugby program (their equivalent of Walla Rugby or whatever NZ calls its equivalent). They've had a couple of million kids go through this apparently. The idea is that inevitably the top kids will get cherrypicked by American football as they get older but if they don't crack the NFL then they already have some experience in rugby to fall back on, rather than just recruiting failed NFL players and trying to convert them to rugby players.
He wouldn't be much chop being a bullocking winger in our team, they hardly get to touch the ball.