Paul Lasike: 'Definitely, you can call not qualifying a silver lining'

Paul Lasike will be up early on Sunday in Salt Lake City, a curious appointment to view where he will be cheering on both teams in the first Rugby World Cup quarter-final of the day. On the one hand, there are his old Harlequins mates to enthuse about, the likes of Marcus Smith who is starting just his second Test with the No15 England jersey on his back.

Lasike’s other hand, though, is pumping approval for Fiji and their return to this stage of the tournament for the first time in 16 years. He doesn’t have Fijian heritage; the New Zealand-born midfielder’s parents instead hail from neighbouring Tonga.

But donning his American hat, the ex-USA Eagles player is all in for France 2023’s sole tier two quarter-final representative. It’s in his long-term interest that the old order gets shaken up. In just eight years’ time, the States will be hosting the 2031 World Cup and they can’t be a failure if the sport is to go on and thrive there.

Lasike has no concern that the message will get out that the tournament is coming to America. “America is the king of advertisement,” he enthused to RugbyPass. But the famed land of opportunity is also notoriously known for championing success and ridiculing failure.

“I saw with the World Cup Sevens they had in San Francisco (in 2018), I don’t think they will have problems marketing the game out there, it will be just a matter of the American people if they can get behind it. You know they will spice it up, they will make it look good and appealing.

“It’s going to be massive for the country and massive for the game here in America, but in order for the game to really take off, the national team has to be good so we have got a bit of a challenge ahead of us getting it off the ground, getting it started at a younger age, all of those things, and so there is a lot of pressure and a lot of things we have got to get done.”

The benefit of hindsight has Lasike suggesting there was a silver lining to America not qualifying for France 2023. Portugal denied them with a last-gasp, result-tying penalty in Dubai last November – and we have since revelled in the sweet jazz the Iberian minnows have produced at the finals, culminating in last Sunday’s magical pool-stage win over Fiji in Toulouse.

The Portuguese are a textbook case of how America can ambitiously aim to entertain in 2031 and capture the global imagination. They were also the reason why USA Rugby realised it badly needed up its game on the back of its desert qualification mishap 11 months ago.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” admitted Lasike. “It’s disappointing not qualifying this year but they have made a few changes at the top and they are basically starting from the ground up again as though it is a brand new sport.

“They have opened up the player pool to search far and wide for players rather than the last five to seven years where they kind of had the same core group. They are trying to mix that up because the USA is massive, there is lots of potential out there, lots of raw talent and if they can get traction that way then it will be like a curve.

“It will be slow to start but once it gets traction and once they find that, which I thought they always had but it has plateaued out a little bit, those big changes will hopefully pay off five, 10 years down the line. Things had to be changed. There were just a lot of things in place that had been stagnant. It’s a wake-up and definitely you can call it [not qualifying] a silver lining.”

Lasike has lapped up how some tier-two countries have excitingly closed the gap in 2023. “It’s been awesome. Definitely, we have seen steps forward with tier two nations playing tier one. In terms of competition, that gap is closing. The World Rugby change that allows players to change country has been awesome and you can see the fruits of it, the likes of the island nations.

“Portugal has done really well. We got knocked out by them so it has been good to see their progress because they have got heaps of potential. It reminds me of the likes of Argentina as a tier two nation where they had massive potential. I’m really happy for Fiji, it has been awesome watching them. They have always had the potential to beat anyone on any given day the last few years, so definitely good luck to them.”

It was 2019 when Lasike experienced the World Cup from a tier two perspective, making starts for the USA against England, Argentina, and Tonga. What way does he look back now on those finals in Japan? "A good experience overall. Some of the results were disappointing, just in terms of the performance.

"But it was a really cool experience. I was still relatively new to rugby because I only came back to rugby in 2018 from playing American football and it was literally that next year when I was at a World Cup, so I didn’t realise how big it was until now watching as a fan I’m like, 'Wow, what a buzz'. You draw back on those experiences in 2019, it was a really cool experience.”

The 33-year-old from Takapuna, who became American-eligible under residency after taking up a college scholarship, has confidence that things can work out at Test level given the evolution he has seen in Major League Rugby.

Having left behind American football where his apprenticeship as a Brigham Young University Cougars running back led to contracts at the Arizona Cardinals and the Chicago Bears, he joined the Utah Warriors in 2017 when they were founded and returned last year to see the franchise transformed after he had finished up at Harlequins.

“It has changed in literally every way possible,” he beamed. “Year one, 2017, the beginning of 2018, there were only seven teams and just from logistics to the competition on the field, it was all really raw, really fresh, not very good. It was basically a start-up company. There were a lot of growing things that first year.

“I went to England for four years, played over there, and then came back in 2022 and this season was my full season, the first full season back, and everything had changed. The competition has gotten better, just the facilities, everything was much more organised, so it was actually really a pleasure to come back to.”

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