Rugby league made a rare appearance at one of America’s most elite seats of learning last week. The demands of studying at Stanford University have been too much for John F. Kennedy, John McEnroe, John Steinbeck and Tiger Woods, all of whom dropped out, but was the academic bedrock for the founders of Google, Yahoo and Hewlett Packard. I was in esteemed company at The Farm, as their beautiful campus in Northern California is affectionately known, for the launch of my book No Helmets Required – the remarkable story of the American All Stars.
Half a dozen of the All Stars players who toured Australia and New Zealand in 1953 were from Stanford. Most have passed away but one, Jack Bonetti, was only prevented from attending the launch by a family illness. One of the Stanford alumni, the late Gary Kerkorian, kicked nine goals from nine in a narrow defeat to Brisbane at the Gabba and five years later became the only rugby league player to win the NFL, as back-up quarterback with Baltimore Colts.
I met the former All Star player Tony Rappa, who played his last game of rugby league for the USA against the magnificent France team of Puig Aubert in the Parc de Princes in Paris exactly 60 years ago. It was the last game of the French tour and the day was bitterly cold. The Americans, who lost 31-0, just wanted to go home. When they did, not one them played another game of rugby league. What an awful waste for our football code.
I called in on Tony at the waterfront seafood restaurant his Sicilian parents had opened just before he went off with his college football pals on a crazy adventure to France in December 1953. There was a private party going on. It turned out to be the closing down bash, as Tony is finally retiring, in his early 80s. He plans to visit the UK one more time. If he does I shall take him to another league game at last.
Another veteran All Star, Don Lent, coached rugby league to his American football teams at several schools around the Los Angeles area before finding God, changing his name to Reverend Timothy II and founding his own church. Now that’s what you call a conversion.
Both Lent and Rappa were among a large group of students from the University of Southern California in LA who played league for the All Stars – many of whom hope to gather for a reunion at University of Southern California at my second book launch later this week. I shall let you know how it goes.
Don Lent representing the US team against Albi, in France, on Christmas Day 1953. Photograph: No Helmets Required
Foreign quota
It’s rare that one gets the chance to walk on a pitch that has hosted both international rugby league and NFL games, but that’s what I managed to do last week at Kezar Stadium in the corner of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Once a towering, ramshackle concrete bowl holding up to 60,000 people, it was home to the San Francisco 49ers from after the war until they moved to the supposedly state-of-the-art Candlestick Park, south of the city, in 1971.
Oakland Raiders also played their first American Football League season there. You may recall it from the classic Clint Eastwood movie Dirty Harry. Now it’s been remodelled as a community sports ground that hosted the USA v Russia league game in 1994. That was in the early days of the US rugby league revival and the current impasse between the two rival factions – the USARL and AMNRL – shows little sign of abating. Perhaps they will come together as the NFL and AFL did 40-odd years ago and grow stronger united. I will give you any updates next week.
At least the US have a couple of international fixtures pencilled in for 2014, which is more than most of the World Cup nations have. They play their annual Colonial Cup series with Canada in August in Toronto and the return in September at an American venue to be confirmed.
Meanwhile, the 49ers, who agreed to start a professional rugby league team to play at Kezar in the late 1950s, will start next season at the new Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, 50 miles south of the city. The Raiders could be on the move again soon, too. And you thought Salford moving from Weaste to Eccles was a trek?
Goal-line drop-out
Another player returning home to his roots last week was Dennis Tuffour. He may not be a high-profile name in our game, but he’s an important one. Dennis blazed a minor trail for rugby league in north London, emerging from White Hart Lane School, opposite the London Skolars ground, 10 years ago as an exhilarating talent on the wing, courtesy of the Skolars’ nascent development programme.
I had the privilege of setting him loose on various unsuspecting opponents when he played for Southgate College and he was a regular for both the Harlequins Rugby League club and, after going to university there to study IT, Hull FC, at Under-20 level.
Tuffour never made a Super League appearance, but that was more to do with timing than lack of ability. If he was 20 years old now, he would be playing for the Broncos over-stretched outfit.
Having become a reliable presence in the Championship at Hunslet, York and Doncaster, Dennis has returned home, ironically, to take the place on the Skolars right wing of his mate and successor at White Hart Lane and Southgate, Smokie Junor, who is recovering from a horrific injury incurred against Wigan in pre-season. Dennis’s achievements undoubtedly inspired Smokie, and he too has shown the raw talent of north London what is possible. They are both fine men, too.
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