‘Super-physical': Houston's Seth Smith points to US rugby future

The Guardian

2 days ago

It's less than two years since Seth Smith became the youngest player ever in Major League Rugby and he only turned 20 this week. The hooker's birthday fell on Tuesday, during the Houston SaberCats' preparation for their first MLR Championship Game, against the New England Free Jacks in Providence, Rhode Island, on Saturday.
The Free Jacks are seeking a third title in a row but in the SaberCats camp, 'Everybody's very positive,' Smith said, contemplating the challenge for a team that had previously played three postseason games and lost them all.
'We've had ups and downs but … these play-off games are the ones that matter. We beat a very strong LA side that fought very hard. And Utah, they're very physical, and we took care of business there as well.'
In that western final, Smith scored a vital try. Of New England, MLR's dominant team in recent years, he says with relish: 'Now we're on to the big Goliath.'
Smith could yet play David. But though he's young he already has a warlike nickname, Viking, thanks to his long blond hair and prodigious strength.
He was introduced to rugby at 11 when his dad found the game on the internet, fell for it, and found a club, Katy Barbarians, who taught his boy to play. In Texas, high-school football is a religion. Smith excelled at fullback for Fulshear and wrestled too but rugby bit hardest. He played with the West Houston Lions and at school and was eyeing a place at Life University in Georgia, a college power, when the SaberCats signed him.
Global rugby watchers might be advised to take note. Smith is the right age for college, the traditional time Americans find rugby, but he's been playing nine years already. More American boys and girls can say the same. Smith's style of hard-hitting athleticism may be about to become a more familiar sight around the oval world.
Asked how traditional school sports helped his rugby education, Smith said: 'Everybody thinks football is like a direct translation to rugby but there's so many different tweaks.'
As a fullback he 'played offense, and I carried every once in a while, but I was more of a blocker. In rugby there's no player who only does attack: everybody has to be able to do attack and defense and be versatile enough to switch quickly. And that's kind of where wrestling came in. Because in wrestling, you're doing both: attacking and defending.
'One of the things I've realized with rugby is, you learn people's bodies, right? You get to understand how people go down. I like tackling. I'm 5ft 9in. I have a low center of gravity. If I ever tried a high tackle, I would have to jump. And so that's what rugby is: you have a double-leg take-down, you have a single-leg take-down. And that's what wrestling is too. And also, you know how to get out of situations. Football is just, like, contact.'
Wrestling helps with scrummaging too: 'It definitely helps with the legs, with your lower body. As a hooker, you have to understand how to use your head in scrums, whenever you're binding. And if there's one thing that I did very well in wrestling, I was very good with the leverage, using the head and shoulders – which goes straight into being a hooker.'
Smith was a flanker first but soon moved from the back of the scrum to the front. It helped that at high school, he came to see the weights room as his 'safe place'.
'My dad's a bodybuilder. I was going into my freshman year of high school, that summer me and him started lifting. It's a place where you can just zone into something and give it everything you have for as long as you want, and have nothing else to worry about. It's like getting in between the four lines [of a rugby field]. You have nothing else to worry about except doing your job. And so it's just a place that I was able to find safety and security.'
Rugby as unsafe safe space: players know the feeling. Come Saturday in Rhode Island, Smith, the SaberCats, the Free Jacks and as many as 10,500 fans – MLR commissioner Nic Benson said the league thinks it will get 'close' to a sell-out – will create such a space once again.
Smith has made Under-19 and U20 US national squads but not yet U23, saying: 'I didn't get invited this year, so that's a good thing for the chip on the shoulder.' At Houston, he has had international talent to learn from, from the great USA flanker Danny Barrett to current SaberCats including the Samoa hooker Pita Anae Ah-Sue. Houston also has a heavy South African influence, through plenty of players and head coach Pote Human, successor to Heyneke Meyer, once coach of the Springboks.
'You watch any South African game, they're going to do three things,' Smith said. 'They're going to out-line-out you, they're going to out-scrum you, and they're going to out-physical you. Those are the things that they do best, and that's why they are so successful.
'I've always been a super-physical player, from playing seven, making the tackles a seven makes, to hooker, it's everything I grew up doing and it's exactly the way that they want players to play. Fitting in at Houston with all the South Africans? I don't think it would be the same anywhere else for me.'
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Those who wish MLR would field more Americans might wish Smith a regular starter elsewhere, though Anthem RC, the North Carolina team formed to field such homegrown talent, has logged two winless seasons.
Asked about Anthem, Benson said: 'If you look at the goals for what we set out to do with Anthem, it was to get young American players more game time and exposure at a higher level. In that respect, it's been a win … I think it's serving its purpose.'
Detailing Smith's progress in a Houston squad heavy with imports, Benson said: 'I think you always have to strike a balance. You want to have the foreign players, but to have a learning experience for the Americans, especially where you have really seasoned professionals who lead by example.
'Like you have the seasoned veteran who shows the younger players what it means to be a professional in terms of eating habits, training, discipline, all of those things. That's a critical component. You see it in Chicago, you see it in San Diego, you see it in Houston. That's a critical piece.'
Either way, it says something that at just 20, Smith is set to feature in the Championship game. Look ahead 10 years: in 2035, at the men's World Cup after the men's World Cup to be held on US soil, Smith will be only 30, a hooker's prime. If the US can find more such talent, dreams of quarter-finals and more may edge closer to fruition.
Smith is raring to go.
'I played my first international game at 15, and I've traveled all over the world. I've played in Scotland, I've played in the Netherlands, I've played in Canada, I've played in Dubai, I've played in Ireland. I've played all over. So going overseas is a big aspiration … and obviously trying to get up with the main Eagles, the big boys, at the men's level. Let's see how far I can take this.'
Martin Pengelly writes on Substack at The National Maul, on rugby in the US