Rugby finding a welcome home in the Lone Star state

Saturday morning in Houston, Texas and it’s already too hot for rugby or anything really.

Later, Ireland will struggle to beat the US Eagles 15-12 underneath the relative comfort of cloud cover but there’s no such luck for the other travelling team in town: representatives of Bridgend College in South Wales who are finishing their tour of Texas with a game just outside the city centre at the home of the St Thomas High School football team. They’ll win 54-0 against a Texas select XV but that’s not too important. The game is growing at an alarming rate in the Lone Star State in spite of the historical dominance of American football at all levels.

“We need these games to show our players where we are aiming to be in terms of technical ability,” the president of Texas Rugby Rick Marshall tells me underneath the stand which stretches almost the length of one of the sidelines.