From Mickey Mouse to Sin City: Vegas venture 25 years in making

When I wanted to go see rugby league in America, I was told it would be ‘Mickey Mouse’.

And when I actually went and did it, there he was.

The year was 1999 and the World Cup qualifiers were taking place at Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida.

When officials announced sanctions against players who had got involved in a bar room brawl, they did so under a statue of the world’s most famous mouse and his spouse.

The qualifiers for the 2000 World Cup had started off in the south of France and moved across the Atlantic where Lebanon was to take on the United States. That meant one team was there as spectators and, under the balance of probability, at risk of getting in strife.

Your correspondent has been back to the 'Land Of The Free' roughly every second year in the quarter-century since as the sport tried to make good on a burning ambition held since the 1950s.

From club games to Test matches and exhibition clashes; Camden, New Jersey to Denver Colorado; inspiration, aspiration and desperation … it’s been a rough hewn highway to Sin City.

Back in 1999, the novelty of league in America was as fresh as morning dew. Hazem El Masri posed for a photo with the Harlem Globe Trotters' Curley Neal. The referee, Stuart Cummings, announced his decisions over the public address.

A year later, England - sponsored by American company Lincoln Insurance, which also backed the 2000 World Cup - warmed up for the tournament 110-0 at the same venue.

Current Wigan CEO Kris Radlinski scored five tries. Your correspondent flew there overnight after watching Wales and South Africa play in Pretoria the previous day.

Another 12 months passed and Aussie Test legend Brett Mullins had the chance to play at a Super Bowl venue when the Sunshine State Challenge, involving Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield and the United States.

The Jacksonville Jaguars' coaching staff watched from the press box and marvelling at the athleticism. They thought rugby league players would be perfect for Arena Football.

Like just about every event described here, aside from World Cup qualifiers, the Sunshine State Challenge never happened again.

My radio station microphone - 2UE from memory - was stolen in a nightclub after the Tomahawks gave the Kangaroos a fright in 2004 in Philadelphia.

But when your correspondent tried to explain what he had been doing in Philly to a New York cab driver a couple of days later, he knew all about it.

"They are the best in the world and we almost beat them," he said.

After half a decade, a modicum of recognition. I'd have given another 10 of someone else's microphones for that.

The game returned to Jacksonville with more star power in 2008, Russell Crowe and Greg Norman getting behind Leeds versus South Sydney before a packed house. This reporter used a few days off to fly in for the build-up, interview Craig Wing and then head to Miami for a rock cruise.

A year later I turned 40 at the Leeds-USA game at Hodges Stadium in the company of my Boston-based latter-best man, Jim Savage. Two men I did not know well at the time, Chris Whitney and Mikhael Shammas (not to be confused with the NRL reporter) were my only companions on this midnight milestone ... along with rugby league, of course, having just been on a River Cruise with Leeds CEO Gary Hetherington.

While all this was happening the sport in America was riven by political stoushes. It was two steps forward, one step back. At best.

We were back at Hodges Stadium in Jacksonville in 2011 for Jamaica's serious international bow, the Atlantic Cup also involving the US and Canada.

Jamaican players told me they had witnessed a gunfight ion downtown Jacksonville. Local pioneer Daryl 'Spinner' Howland reckoned they made it up.

And an American doctor ran onto the field and demanded Phil Bentham, recently appointed the head of referees in the UK, stop a match because a Jamaican player had been concussed. He said he had more authority than the match officials under US convention.

Bentham won that battle but the doctor, it could be argued, won the war. Doctors are telling Bentham what to do again in 2024.

The qualifiers for the 2013 World Cup went to a now-demolished baseball stadium in Camden, New Jersey.

The indefatigable Jamaican development officer Romeo Monteith could not understand why we described it in a report as "the murder capital of the US". Well, partly because that was interesting, but mainly because that's what it was. 

The United States progressed, finishing ahead of Jamaica and South Africa and soon they would attract the attention of the Wiggles and "Shock The World".

Leeds played the USA outlaws in Jacksonville in 2015.

In 2016, the US and Canada played on a park in Wilmington Delaware as a curtain raiser to a local amateur gridiron match; the council never opened the dressing rooms and an experienced sports executive asked me on the way back to my hotel (where I blogged the NRL grand final), "is it always like this?" 

We went to Denver in 2018, where for all the disappointment of players being stranded and a US World Cup bid falling over through lack of resources, the game attracted its biggest US crowd of 19,320. Working in his Boston bar, Jim was astonished to see the match come up on his TV without him looking for it.

Then, on a smaller field at the University Of North Florida adjacent from the one where they had taken their bow eight years earlier, there were chaotic scenes as the Reggae Warriors qualified for their first World Cup by beating the hosts in 2019.

"One love," Monteith proclaimed as players embraced each other.

Most of the people who have poured their lives into developing rugby league in America - from Mike Dimitro, who took the 1953 All Stars to Australia (check out the excellent No Helmets Required by Gavin Willacy), to Mike Mayer, who terrorised international boards in the late seventies and eighties - never lived to see what is happening in Las Vegas this week.

US internationals like Fred Gruhler and David Bowe got close. So did my old mate Jim, who died 15 months ago.

But many of us will go to the Nines, the Combine, the US-Canada Test and the NRL double header at the home of the 2024 Super Bowl carrying them with us, experiencing it for them.

Walking through Fremont Street on Tuesday morning, I had to wonder what they would have made of it all. Aussie indy band Sheppard were sound checking on an outdoor stage as tourists and hawkers mingled in the spring sunshine.

There was a giant Roosters logo on the screen behind them. There was, however, no sign of Mickey.