Olympic Rugby Sevens: USA success would ‘send ripples through America’ says former Wasps and England star

The last time Phil Greening played in a game on a stage to rival the Paris Olympic stadium he won an English Premiership and suffered a career-ending injury.

The 2005 Twickenham final between Leicester and Wasps is remembered as Martin Johnson’s final game of rugby, him being England’s World Cup-winning captain and all that.

Less well remembered is that on the same May day Greening, capped 24 times at hooker by England and a key cog in Wasps’ title-winning machine, damaged his foot so badly he never played again.

USA move

“It was a choice of carry on and if your foot goes again you’re on a walking cane, or go now with a medal round your neck,” he recalls. “I chose that.”

Almost 20 years later Greening is back in the spotlight, as performance coach for the USA rugby teams. And today is a very big one for their women’s sevens side.

Wins yesterday against Japan and Brazil means they go into their Pool C decider versus host nation France assured of a quarter-final spot this evening.

Mike Friday, the USA head coach, has already labelled this Olympic Sevens competition as “make or break” for the sport due to the rise and rise of Flag Football and, to a lesser degree, Rugby League 9s.

Now Greening has added his voice, specifically addressing the challenge of selling rugby to the lucrative US market ahead of the Los Angeles Olympics (2028) and 15s World Cups in 2031 (men) and 2033 (women).

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“Americans love to follow success,” says a man who has spent the past decade commuting from the UK to help Friday run the US team programme.

“And the trajectory for women’s rugby in the US is massive. If the girls medal here that will change things, that will send ripples through America for sure. Because this country loves the Olympics.”

Asked to elaborate on exactly how significant a first American rugby sevens medal would be, Greening pauses for a moment.

“Look, there has to be success for the schools to get interested,” he says. “Because rugby in America is competing against the massive sports of football, basketball and baseball.

“It’s not so much the professional aspect, it’s the access to go to college and get your college paid for.

“The education system in the States is all about get your kid into college by any sport, any means. Until there are scholarships for rugby, the sport is going to fall behind.”

Greening gives the example of Joe Schroeder, who represented the US in rugby sevens at the last Olympics, having had his education paid for by going to university on a cheerleading scholarship.

“You’ll do anything to go to college,” reiterates the former Gloucester, Sale and Wasps star. “Until rugby is a pathway I don’t think any parent will be pushing their kid into it.

“We need it in high school, in the curriculum, so athletes can go to college and shoot for the NFL or NBA, then can come back to rugby once they haven’t made it, which 99% don’t, with knowledge of the sport.

“At the moment it’s a big ask for a college athlete who’s been playing in front of 100,000 crowds to come back and start from scratch for no money and have to work three times as hard as they did to learn a new sport.

“Then when they realise the income from rugby they can make from rugby, as compared to NFL or NBA, and they think they might as well go get a job [instead].”

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But if rugby can attract scholarship status?

“Wow, that would be a game changer,” says Greening. “The women’s game in particular will get so big in the States if that happens.”

The potential is enormous in a nation which won the first 15s Women’s World Cup in 1991 and reached the next two finals. Star player Ilona Maher has 1.5 million followers on TikTok, more even than track superstar Noah Lyles.

Beyond these Olympics Greening does not know where his future lies either. What is for sure is that he has served American rugby with distinction.

When USA Rugby went bankrupt in 2020 he and Friday stayed on, “worked months without being paid because we committed for the long run”.

He then went from corporate box to box at the Hong Kong Sevens, “begging” as he put it, trying to find a sponsor for the US shirt.

His dream is for Wasps to be brought back from the dead and to coach his beloved former club in the upper echelons of the English game in Kent.

But that is for another day. Today is all about the Olympics.

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