Travelling to the USA to play Rugby

Question
QUESTION: Hi Nick,

My name is Marianne and I am living in Australia. My partner and I have been talking about the possibility of coming over to the USA for a while so that he can play some rugby.

He is originally from New Zealand also, and has been playing since he was 5 years old.

I was wondering what advice you can offer in terms of finding a team who may be willing to recruit him for a season or two? He is 27 years old, and has played senior level positions for his entire football career, and looking for something different.

I hope that you can help out with this, as I am just searching the internet, trying to get some ideas, and possibly make a few contacts.

We would be looking for a team in California preferably.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Kind regards
Marianne

ANSWER: I highly suggest the southern California competition: LA, Orange County and San Diego.

The two strongest clubs are Belmont Shore in LA/Long Beach and the next would be OMBAC in San Diego, a close third would be Back Bay (my old club) If you go to their websites they each have contacts to go to for playing.

Grant Reynolds is the guy to talk to at Back Bay - he should be listed on the site:

www.backbayrfc.com or you can ask me to chase him up for you.

Southern California rugby is great fun, today is a warm 88-90 degree Fahrenheit sunny day. The level of rugby is the same a Senior Reserves but it is rare to get paid and the perks are few. It would be best to have a budget and treat it more like a working holiday than a professional deal.

Immigration to the USA is very hard unless you or your husband have seriously in need skills so keep in mind you will be doing under the table stuff.

Let me know if you have any questions. What position is he?

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Nick,

Thanks for your quick response. I will defintely look into the teams that you mentioned and see if anything comes up.

We are looking at it as a change of scenery and a wokring holiday, so the expectations wont be too high when looking for funding etc, although this would be nice :)

I am also a US citizen, so we would have to work something out for my partner if this was to come about.

Thanks again for your help.

Marianne

Answer
Hi no worries.

Let me know if I can help. If you are a citizen you'll be fine (obviously) the only real option for your guy is for you two to get married (yikes). I ended up getting married and it is not a big deal to process the paperwork. I would say get hear first then get the marriage done then do the paper work here - if that is an option for you.

One of the guys at Back Bay RFC just happens to be a specialist immigration attorney, and a good one at that.