{"id":567670,"date":"2026-03-27T11:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T11:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/567670\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T11:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T11:13:08","slug":"can-adam-freiers-california-legion-solve-americas-rugby-problem-rugby-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/567670\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Adam Freier\u2019s California Legion solve America\u2019s rugby problem? | Rugby union"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day in March 2012, Adam Freier sat down to write a column<\/a> for the Sydney Morning Herald. His Melbourne Rebels were on a losing streak and though he had 25 caps at hooker including a World Cup campaign for Australia, he was nearly 32 and staring at the end of a career at the coalface, 12 years in the front row of the scrum at the highest level. Describing a body breaking down, a struggling club, the agony of endless defeats, he imagined group therapy in front of \u201cstrangers in the local hall\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy name is Adam Freier, and I hate to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fast-forward 14 years. In many ways he\u2019s winning. A career in media, administration and business has taken him to Manhattan Beach, in the sunshine of Los Angeles county. He\u2019s still in rugby, CEO of the California Legion. But in that role, he faces another very steep challenge indeed.<\/p>\n

Formed last year by the merger<\/a> of the San Diego Legion and RFC Los Angeles, on Saturday the new team will kick off season nine of Major League Rugby. It\u2019s a time for new beginnings but many in American rugby are looking back in anger. The US men\u2019s professional competition had a horrible offseason<\/a>, losing Utah Warriors, NOLA Gold, Miami Sharks and Houston SaberCats to shrink to just six teams. It looked like the end but there have been leadership changes, strategy changes and a long-sought collective bargaining agreement<\/a> with the poor bloody infantry, the players who make it work. Like Freier throughout his own playing career \u2013 which actually ended at 40<\/a>, after years of club rugby in Sydney for Randwick \u2013 MLR isn\u2019t stopping scrapping.<\/p>\n

Seeking to spread the word, the Legion are taking their regular-season home games all around the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur mantra is to be brave, to be bold and to be first,\u201d Freier said. \u201cSo the thing that we looked at, and this is no disrespect to what anyone else is doing in sport in America, and certainly in MLR, we wanted to do something different. As a business and as a sports team, we\u2019ve got to be brave, we\u2019ve got to be bold. And taking it to California was definitely that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saturday brings Anthem Rugby Carolina to Championship Stadium in Irvine, Orange county<\/a>. Next week, the three-time champion New England Free Jacks come to Torero Stadium in San Diego. After that, the Seattle Seawolves, sole MLR founders standing, come to UCLA. Then the show goes north, for Chicago Hounds at Saint Mary\u2019s College in the East Bay Area and Old Glory DC at Heart Health Park, Sacramento. Hopefully there\u2019ll be a home playoff too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some rugby competitions around the world that have the ability to adapt and change and do things differently, and some that can\u2019t,\u201d Freier said. \u201cWe have that ability, and we\u2019ve just got such an awesome market. What we have to appreciate and understand is that for some of the fans, it hasn\u2019t been easy. But we are going to reward them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSouthern California is a hotbed of rugby talent and rugby fans. There are some incredible clubs: OMBAC<\/a>, Aztecs<\/a> [both San Diego], Belmont Shore<\/a> [Long Beach], Santa Monica.<\/a> There\u2019s some really good foundations.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so we are in Orange County this weekend. It\u2019s an incredible stadium. We\u2019ve got Belmont Shore playing before us, against OMBAC. We\u2019ve got the Mustangs<\/a> [youth, San Diego], local clubs coming down and playing in the vicinity. What we want to turn this into long term is really a festival of rugby, getting as many games around us as possible. At the moment, we\u2019ve got six. It\u2019s going to be a celebration, telling the Orange County market we want everyone to be very supportive of their local club, Belmont Shore, and always of your area, whether you\u2019re from San Diego or LA. I\u2019ve had a full riot act about why those two cities don\u2019t like one another, but hopefully when you\u2019re playing rugby, you support your local club, then when you go to that next level, we all support the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe San Diego Legion fanbase has really shown people how to be fanatics. On the other end, you\u2019ve got LA fans that had a cocktail glass to support at one point, and then they had a bunch of letters in RFCLA, and it\u2019s been really hard, and change is difficult. We are thinking about long-term success, long-term sustainability, but also not disrespecting those people in those places. I speak to five fans a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s much to discuss. San Diego fans hold the regular-season crowd record (11,423 v Utah, 2023<\/a>), some so passionate they have dressed as Roman legionaries, out-shouting New Englanders in tricorn hats and wigs. Some from San Diego were decidedly unhappy about the merger with LA, whose rugby folk did indeed once have a \u201ccocktail glass\u201d to follow, the LA Giltinis, named for a drink named for their owner, Aussie fitness magnate<\/a> Adam Gilchrist. Champions in 2021, thrown out<\/a> in 2022, the Giltinis years generated recrimination and legal settlements<\/a>. For Freier, as Giltinis\u2019 president, it was another bruising experience. After that he had a spell selling Americans Aussie beer, a brand part-owned by great fast bowler Brett Lee, before pitching back into rugby.<\/p>\n

Describing his engagement with Legion fans, Freier said: \u201cI had some beers with them the other day. They weren\u2019t easy beers to have, I definitely was served a couple of spears. I think we underestimate how passionate people are about rugby in that part of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rollout of the new project, Freier says, could have been done differently. But that\u2019s all said and done and here Freier stands, contemplating a slightly insane workload, moving a season around a state with the fourth-biggest economy in the world as it prepares to host a soccer World Cup which has booked up nearly every decent grass field.<\/p>\n

The Rugby World Cup is also coming to the US, in 2031. With its reduction in size, MLR has shifted to developmental mode, employing mostly US-qualified players. Alex Magleby, the Eagles flanker and coach turned Free Jacks co-founder and MLR co-president, said a six-team league may be about the right size for developing domestic players \u2013 but emphasized that growth remains the ambition.<\/p>\n

Putting on his \u201cold general manager and national team coach hat\u201d, Magleby said: \u201cTo be successful long term, we need scale. That\u2019s just math. You know, scale can come from global eyeballs, but as we know in the American media landscape, having lots of markets with passionate fans is significantly better from a rights perspective or an aggregation of sponsorship. So scale is still really important for this league.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year, Freier said, \u201calignment is key and the Eagles need to win. Look at the hockey teams\u2019 performance at the Winter Olympics. Look at the Eagles women winning a bronze medal in the sevens in Paris<\/a> [in 2024]. The most beautiful thing about this country is the patriotism, how much they love their national teams and that flag and who they are and what they represent. A strong Eagles team has to be our No 1 goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really care about the growth of rugby here in the States. I do believe this, I think California can play a major role in making sure that US rugby is a vibrant, colorful sport, successful in a World Cup and being a global brand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freier was never your average hooker. (He prefers \u201chigh-class\u201d.) Relatively undersized for the role, more unusually in an Australian sporting landscape where old divides linger he was from a well-known rugby league family, his dad, Laurie, a player for Eastern Suburbs and Manly-Warringah in the 1970s, coach of Easts and Western Suburbs thereafter. His son played union at school, Waverley College, and became a standout perhaps best compared to Brian Moore<\/a>, late of the England and the Lions, another tough little bastard turned rugby writer and thinker. Offered the comparison, Freier was flattered but wary.<\/p>\n

In that Sydney Morning Herald column, considering the pro rugby life, Freier reached for what may seem an unlikely image: \u201cMichelangelo once said he could \u2018see the angel in the marble\u2019. Maybe that\u2019s my ointment for losing. Being an optimist. He also said that \u2018he carved till he set him free\u2019, which means it\u2019s going to require a resilient effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freier\u2019s current job certainly requires that. Asked if he can sense the angel in the MLR marble, he said: \u201cIt\u2019s so true. If I can quote it again, I will. That\u2019s what keeps you working. What it might be.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe owners of MLR, they are awesome. If you talk to them one-on-one, they\u2019re all chipping away at the marble as well. They are real rugby people, good owners that really care, who love rugby. Everyone\u2019s chipping away at that marble, and that\u2019s why I\u2019m here, mate. There\u2019s a reason why I\u2019m doing it. I genuinely see that there\u2019s big upside, especially in California, fourth-biggest economy on the planet. You know, rugby here could be absolutely anything, and that\u2019s why we all come back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One day in March 2012, Adam Freier sat down to write a column for the Sydney Morning Herald.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-567670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}