United States at the Rugby League World Cup

About United States in rugby league

The United States men's team, nicknamed the Tomahawks for most of its history before a 2014 rebrand to the Hawks under the newly formed USA Rugby League, has a long and fitful international history dating to a 1953 American All-Stars tour of Australia and New Zealand that generated interest but little lasting growth. The modern revival began in 1987, and the sport's domestic base strengthened further with the 1997 launch of Super League America and the AMNRL amateur competition. The USA's most famous individual result came in 2004, when the Americans led defending World Cup champions Australia 18-0 in a Test match before eventually losing 36-24 — still remembered as a genuine moral victory. The Hawks made their first World Cup appearance in 2013 after qualifying in 2012, advancing out of their group with wins over the Cook Islands (32-0) and Wales (24-16) before a heavy 62-0 quarter-final loss to Australia — comfortably the best World Cup run of any of the code's newer expansion nations at that point. Governance transferred to USA Rugby League in 2014, and the union has since run the team as the Hawks under head coach Adam Woolnough, including a high-profile fixture against Scotland staged in Las Vegas as part of a wider push to raise the code's profile in the American market. As of December 2025 the USA sat 8th in the IRL Men's World Rankings — comfortably the highest-ranked of any nation still outside the World Cup's traditional core group, and a sign of just how much depth the sport has built in the American market since that 2004 near-upset of Australia first suggested the country could be a genuine emerging force in the code.

Sources

• United States national rugby league team — Wikipedia