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The USA rugby player who isn’t allowed to enter America || Rugby Pass documentary

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4 years ago

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RugbyPass have documented the incredible story of Paul Mullen, the Irishman who packed down for the USA at tighthead at last year’s World Cup finals in Japan. 

The 28-year-old – who has won 18 caps since making a 2018 Test debut – is currently stranded at his family home on Inis Mór, the largest of the three Aran Islands, after he came home from San Diego Legion following the cancellation of the 2020 Major League Rugby season in March.   

Mullen expected to be working in the family business, Aran Bike Hire, for only two months. However, pandemic travel restrictions between Ireland and the United States have extended his stay, leaving him training in isolation and so far unable to get back across the Atlantic ahead of his adopted country’s next Test game against Canada in Vancouver later this month.

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RugbyPass brings you The Islander, the remarkable story of USA prop Paul Mullen

“I suppose right now I’m trying to get back into the States,” he said in The Islander, the documentary charting his sudden rise from rugby obscurity to starting against his native Ireland at Aviva Stadium in November 2018 before going to gain World Cup selection. 

“I came home for two months to help out and now I am stuck here, basically until whenever (Donald) Trump lets me back in.”

Mullen represented Munster and Ireland at age-grade levels while growing up, regularly taking the 40-minute ferry to the mainland in Galway and then bussing it to Limerick 65 miles away for training. However, when his parents wanted him to put education before rugby, they enrolled him to study marine engineering in Texas, far away from the hubbub of the vibrant rugby scene in Ireland.

After graduating in America many years later, Mullen felt he had unfinished business in rugby and he quickly went from playing at a lower level with Galveston to starring for Houston in the MLR and then on to selection for the USA Eagles. “It just happened so fast. You’re going from playing division three with Galveston and a few weeks later you’re playing for the Houston SaberCats and a couple of months later you’re playing for the USA. Mad, it happened to me very fast.”

Filmed in late July on Inis Mór, The Islander follows Mullen as he balances work with training in his rough-and-ready back garden gym, trying to keep himself fit for when he can eventually return to playing rugby in America, a country very different from island life off the west coast of Ireland.

“The toughest thing about living on the island is coming and going but also getting stuff out here, bringing 100kgs of weight on the ferry, it’s a pain in the ass,” he explained. “Nothing comes easy out here. You definitely have to work for it.

“The island is nine miles long and three miles wide. To me it’s normal, I wouldn’t know any different. Population about 800 people so you know everybody, everybody knows you which can be good and bad… from living in the States and stuff, growing up here as a kid it was fantastic as you had so much freedom. As a kid, you just hopped on your bike and cycled around the place.”

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HKFC coach Jack Wiggins heading to US and role with MLR side San Diego Legion – South China Morning Post

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3 years ago

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January 21, 2022

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Wigan Warriors 2010 Grand Final winners – Where are they now?

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3 years ago

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January 5, 2022

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2010 saw Wigan Warriors finish the season as League Leaders and Grand Final winners, defeating St Helens 22-10 at Old Trafford to lift the Super League trophy.

Thomas Leuluai claimed the Harry Sunderland Trophy on the day, while team-mates Martin Gleeson, Darrell Goulding and Sam Tomkins all crossed for four-pointers.

We take a look at where the Wigan line-up are today… 

6 Sam Tomkins

Sam Tomkins was rewarded with the number six shirt for the 2010 season, replacing Tim Smith. Scoring a try in the Grand Final, the full-back is still one of the best in the game heading into 2022. The 2021 Steve Prescott Man of Steel winner will be eyeing up a spot in the England squad for the upcoming Rugby League World Cup.

24 Darrell Goulding

The former Wigan outside-back was forced to retire at the age of 27 due to injury, having made more than 150 top flight appearances for the Warriors, Hull KR and Salford. Goulding won two caps for England during his playing days, and now oversees the youth development at Wigan. He was also part of the first team coaching staff in 2020.

3 Martin Gleeson

The former Great Britain and England representative is now the assistant attack coach at rugby union side, Wasps RFC. He joined the club ahead of the 2019/20 season, and made the switch from Salford where he was the club’s assistant coach. 

4 George Carmont

George Carmont made his first team debut for Newcastle Knights in 2004, and went on to join Wigan ahead of the 2008 season. The former Samoa captain went on to make more than 150 appearances for the club. According to his LinkedIn, the former centre now works as a distribution officer in Mount Wellington. 

5 Pat Richards

Pat Richards made more than 350 career appearances across stints in both the NRL and Super League, while also winning seven caps for Ireland. He retired at the end of the 2016 season after a year in Perpignan with Catalans, but returned to the game in 2020 as he was named for Wests Tigers in the Perth Nines. According to LinkedIn, Richards now enjoys life as a business development manager at United Forklift and Access Solutions, while also holding the title as Wests Tigers’ Foundation Ambassador. 

19 Paul Deacon 

Paul Deacon was a member of the Wigan coaching staff for four years since retiring from playing in 2011 and also worked as assistant to then-head coach Steve McNamara with England. He now works as a coach for Sale Sharks.

7 Thomas Leuluai

The New Zealand half-back was named Wigan’s captain in 2021, and has signed a new one-year deal for the upcoming Super League campaign. He will enter his 12th season with the Warriors and his 20th in his career.

8 Stuart Fielden

The former England and Great Britain international started as prop in the 2010 Grand Final, and made more than 370 career appearances across stints with Bradford, Wigan and Huddersfield. He once held the world record for a transfer fee. According to his LinkedIn, Fielden now works as a pastoral and behavioural interventions, as well as earning his level two gym instructor and level three personal training qualifications in 2016.

15 Michael McIlorum

Michael McIlorum started at hooker over Mark Riddell in the 2010 Grand Final, and still features in the Super League for the Dragons. The England and Ireland international signed a new deal with Catalans Dragons for 2022.

10 Andy Coley

Andy Coley made more than 400 career appearances, having made his debut for Swinton. He went on to appear for Salford and Wigan, playing more than 200 games for the Warriors. According to his LinkedIn, Coley now works as operations director at Greenmount Projects Ltd.

11 Harrison Hansen

Harrison Hansen made his debut for Wigan at the age of 18, and went on to win two Challenge Cup and two Super League titles with the Warriors. He will feature again in Super League in 2022 with newly-promoted side Toulouse.

12 Joel Tomkins

Joel Tomkins made 237 appearances for Wigan over two stints with the club, scoring 64 tries. He won six caps for England, as well as three with England rugby union during his code-switch. He had signed with Leigh in the Championship for the 2022 season, before announcing his retirement from the sport.

13 Sean O’Loughlin

After a 19-year career with his hometown club, Sean O’Loughlin announced his retirement at the end of the 2020 season. He had played 459 games for the Warriors, and won ten major honours. The former skipper now works as assistant coach at the DW Stadium side.

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9 Mark Riddell

The former Super League and NRL hooker made 62 appearances for Wigan. Mark Riddell retired in 2011 after a 10-year career at the top. Since retirement, he enjoyed a role as coach of the Australian women’s team and a commentator for Sydney radio station 2GB.

14 Paul Prescott

The prop forward was forced to retire from the sport at the age of just 27 due to injury. An Ireland international, Paul Prescott made 145 appearances for Wigan after making his debut for his hometown club in 2004. According to LinkedIn, he is now head of operations – Youth at The Premier League, MBA. 

17 Iafeta Paleaaesina

The powerful New Zealand forward enjoyed more than 350 first-grade games in the sport. He made his debut for New Zealand Warriors, and featured for Wigan, Salford, Limoux Grizzlies, Hull and Doncaster. He became Hull’s full-time player welfare manager at the end of 2016 having taken the role part-time during last season.

25 Liam Farrell

Liam Farrell started the 2010 season on dual-registration at Widnes. Maguire gave Farrell his Wigan first team debut in April against Wakefield, scoring a try from the bench. He was named in the 17 for the club’s Grand Final that year, and still features for the Warriors. The England international was named in the Super League Dream Team in 2021 for his fourth time.

READ MORE: The impressive XIII of academy products handed their senior Wigan debuts by Shaun Wane

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Kathy Flores, Pathbreaking Women’s Rugby Coach, Dies at 66

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3 years ago

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January 5, 2022

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The 1991 Women’s Rugby World Cup came down to a face-off between the brash but underdog Americans and the established England team, the product of a long British tradition in the sport.

But it was the United States team that won the final, in Cardiff Arms Park in Wales, capturing what came to be considered the first major world championship ever played in women’s rugby.

Kathy Flores wore No. 8 for the Americans, handling a key position at the center of the field.

Over her 40-year career in the sport, Flores helped bring about some of the formative events of U.S. rugby history. She captained the USA Women’s Rugby Team in 1987 and coached the same team from 2003 to 2010, returning with it to the women’s rugby World Cup in 2006 and 2010. And from 2014 until Oct. 21, when she died of colon cancer at 66 in Providence, R.I., she was the coach of Brown University’s Division I women’s rugby team. The J.F. Skeffington Funeral Home in Providence reported her death in an obituary.

Flores’s legacy as a coach was one of inclusion. She pushed for more support for women’s rugby, telling The Associated Press in 2010 that “women have always wanted to be physical, but they haven’t had the opportunity.”

She also coached the San Francisco Fog, an LGBTQ rugby team, and played for and later coached the Berkeley All Blues, a Bay Area semiprofessional team, winning 11 league championships from 1994 to 2010.

“I love the sport, and I want to expose as many people to it as I can, particularly young women,” Flores told The Bay Area Reporter in 2013. “It’s important for their confidence and self-esteem.”

“With college girls, after playing rugby, they start thinking better of themselves and realize what they can do better,” she said. “You see them walk into interviews differently. Working with gay men, I see the same things. After playing a little bit of sports, there’s a whole change in how they see themselves, kind of like a flower blooming.”

Flores often received a meager salary for playing or coaching rugby, and she recalled in a 2017 interview with the BBC that a majority of the players on the 1991 national team had held jobs to support themselves and often lost them when they traveled to compete.

Women’s rugby at the national level has historically been underfunded and under-promoted in comparison with the men’s game, she said in a 2011 interview with the blog Rugby Wrap Up.

When asked about her desire to continue coaching World Cup teams, she said she was unsure given the inadequate funding. “It’s lip service to say the women get support when our Eagles have to do raffles and sell last World Cup’s gear to raise money,” she said. “Next it will be bake sales. Are the men doing this too?”

Women’s rugby has long had to fend for itself. The 1991 World Cup was organized not by the International Rugby Board, the sport’s governing body, but by four players from the Richmond Women’s Rugby Club in Britain. They wrote to national teams, booked fields for the matches and raised money to cover costs.

The Rugby Board, now called World Rugby, acknowledged the legitimacy of the tournament in 2009, when, in a news release, it listed the U.S. Women’s National Team as 1991 champions.

The Americans won that 1991 final game, 19-6, before 3,000 fans, whose mere presence was nerve-racking, Flores said in the BBC interview. “Just, you know, having people watching us was something different,” she said.

The game was a triumph of athletic prowess over the long experience of European rugby teams. “They obviously may have understood the strategy of the game a bit better than we did having grown up with it,” Flores told scrumhalfconnection.com, a women’s rugby website, “but our fitness and mobility between our fast backs and forwards outlasted them.”

But she said that American rugby officials had failed to capitalize on the team’s success. “They didn’t really promote it as you could have,” she said.

Kathleen Theresa Flores was born on Feb. 7, 1955, in Philadelphia to Catharine (Miles) and Joseph Flores. She graduated from Monmouth Regional High School in New Jersey and attended East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania, earning a bachelor’s degree in physical education.

She went on to Florida State University for a master’s degree in exercise physiology and began playing rugby there at 23. (Information on her survivors was not available.)

Zyana Thomas, a senior at Brown and a women’s rugby player who wears No. 8, as Flores did, said in an interview that Flores, who was of Filipino and Hawaiian descent, supported players of color in particular. And when Thomas experienced homelessness in college, she said, Flores gave her a place to stay.

Last year, the position of women’s rugby coach at Brown, through a donation, was endowed in her name.

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