Heineken Cup champions Munster will play the USA in Chicago this August, it has been learned.



The agreement will see a senior panel of Munster players not involved with the Ireland World Cup panel travel to Chicago to play a full-strength USA team on August 26 as a final preparation for the Eagles before heading to the World Cup in France this autumn. The USA have been drawn alongside England, Samoa, South Africa and Tonga in Pool A.


The World Cup warm-up match would be the first high-level manifestation of a strategic partnership between USA Rugby and Munster Rugby.


The American squad for next month’s IRB U19 World Championship in Belfast will be hosted in Limerick by the Munster Branch for three days this week and will play a warm-up match on Saturday against Munster’s U-19s at Tom Clifford Park.


Munster chief executive Garrett Fitzgerald conceded that it was only a matter of dotting i’s and crossing t’s.

“We’re waiting for confirmation,” said Fitzgerald yesterday. “But both the USA and ourselves are keen for this game to go ahead. The word is that it will be played in Chicago and an announcement will be made in due course.”

Follow up:

The strategic partnership has also seen the Americans assist with the establishment of Munster Rugby USA, a supporters’ club for expatriate fans launched on the East Coast in New York last October and in California earlier this month.


USA Rugby’s new chief executive Nigel Melville, the former England scrum-half and director of rugby at Wasps and Gloucester, was present when Declan Kidney, Anthony Foley and Alan Quinlan brought the Heineken Cup to the Bay Area for an ‘Irish Week’ in and around San Francisco, and has been working with Munster Rugby USA to forge the alliance between the two parties.

“USA Rugby agreed to a strategic partnership with Munster Rugby,” Melville said. “The USA U19 squad is being hosted by Munster in preparation for their World Championship tournament in Belfast next month — just one of the initiatives we’re working on to benefit both organisations.”

Source: The Irish Examiner