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USA’s winger Takudzwa Ngwenya (L) runs to score a try in front of South Africa’s winger Bryan Habana during the Rugby union world cup pool A match South Africa vs USA, 30 September 2007 in Montpellier, southern France. Ngwenya, a 22 year-old radiology student from Dallas emerged from the tournament as a fan favorite.

By Ismail Lagardien

An estimated four billion people around the world watched the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France – where the United States Eagles played against some of the best countries from around the globe. As most of the team filtered home after their final game against South Africa last week, a feel-good factor spread among the players, coaches and officials.

Although the Eagles were beaten in all four of their pool matches, the U.S. continued to establish itself as a rugby test-playing country in the world and as an added bonus produced one of the gems of the RWC2007; a 22 year-old radiology student from Dallas, Takudzwa Ngwenya. The Zimbabwe-born U.S. citizen was “discovered” in a division two club in Dallas, according to USA Rugby’s Sara John.

Ngwenya was hailed by the international media for two “scintillating tries” he scored against Samoa and South Africa. During the tournament he beat and quite simply outpaced two of the sports toughest players in Samoa’s Alesana Tuilagi and South Africa’s Bryan Habana – the latter of whom is considered to be probably the world’s fastest player in his position. Reports on Ngwenya’s performance at the RWC2007 were superlative. Swing Low, the British online news and information service dedicated to the sport described the duel between Ngwenya and Habana as “arguably the moment of the tournament” “Ngwenya teased his opposite number [Habana] by feinting inside, before dabbing on the accelerator and flying past Habana on the outside to ground under the posts. It brought the crowd to their feet and was probably the try of the World Cup so far,” wrote Swing Low.

Ngwenya was modest about his achievements. Having grown up just north of the South African border, he was a passionate supporter and fan of that country’s rugby – especially of the players he left for dust at the RWC. He talked down his achievement of scorching Habana – South Africa’s try-scoring machine.

“I’m not sure I outpaced him, I just made him stop. I would never have run on the outside of anybody so these games must be giving me confidence… The [South African] Springboks were my favorite team when I was growing up in Zimbabwe, so it’s a good feeling to score a try against them. I also wanted to tackle Percy (Montgomery) because he is my favorite player, but I didn’t get a chance.” Ngwenya told Agance France Press.

His team captain, Mike Hercus, was more generous in his praise for Ngwenya: “I guess the rugby world considers Bryan the fastest guy around. Well, Takudzwa put his hand up today,” Hercus said.

While Ngwenya lit up the tournament, organisers of the sport in the U.S. are smiling and quietly going about their way to develop the game. Nigel Melville, Rugby USA’s Chief Executive Officer has started a program mining rugby leagues around the country for talent. From the Californian hotbed of rugby to the colleges in New England, Rugby USA are intent on significant improvement in the game’s appeal domestically, and ranking internationally. Melville’s greatest obstacle may well be breaking the monopoly that sports like baseball, football and basketball have on mainstream media exposure – especially TV.

The main sports in the U.S., especially football and baseball, make their living off television revenues – unsurprisingly perhaps, it all started in Washington. In 1961 Congress passed the Sport Broadcasting Act. This permitted professional sports franchises to negotiate the sale of national broadcast rights as a single economic unit. In 1962, because of anti-trust exemptions, CBS contracted exclusive rights to the NFL with a package worth an estimated $4.6 million a year. Two years later, according to researchers at the United States Sports Academy assisted by a 50 percent increase in ratings, CBS agreed to a 300 percent increase and a package of $14 million for each of the next two years. One outcome of the new deal was the survival of the Green Bay Packers, who proceeded to dominate the league for years afterwards.

Since then television rights for the NFL increased dramatically. By 1998, the rights to televise NFL games (including the Super Bowl) were sold to several networks for eight years for $17.6 billion. All television money is split evenly among the NFL teams – which averages $73.3 million per team annually. An estimated 65 percent of all revenues of NFL teams come from the sale of television rights, a almost five times more than what Major League Baselball teams receive.

These are the odds stacked against USA Rugby – notwithstanding the fact that the US have played international rugby for almost a century, won the Olympic Gold Medal in 1920 and 1924, and are currently ranked 15th out of 95 test-playing countries in the world.