While the NFL discovers Melbourne, the NRL's already deep in America

On Friday morning, the MCG hosts American football for the first time ever in a regular season game. San Francisco and the Rams, in front of a crowd nearing 100,000. It's being called historic, and it is. But rugby league got there first, in the other direction, and the two codes have been quietly borrowing from each other for years.

Melbourne gets its first taste

The 49ers arrived a full week early, running fan camps and mixing with the public well before kickoff. George Kittle and Nick Bosa fronted the charm offensive. The Rams took the opposite approach entirely, flying in less than 30 hours before the game to minimise the time zone hit, then heading straight back to LA afterwards. Two genuinely different philosophies on how to handle a trip nobody in the league has made before.

The NRL already made this trip, just the other way

While the NFL plans its first Australian game, the NRL has spent three years building an actual foothold in the United States. Las Vegas has hosted the NRL season opener every year since 2024, and the connections that trip built run deeper than a single weekend.

The Brisbane Broncos were first. Ahead of that 2024 opener, they based their entire US camp out of the Rams' training facility in California, with Kevin Walters' squad using the same fields and gym as an NFL franchise. It paid off in an unexpected way eighteen months later. Broncos prop Ben Te Kura, at 205 centimetres the tallest player in NRL history, was released from his contract this year to chase an NFL pathway, with his management drawing direct comparisons to Jordan Mailata, the Eagles left tackle who made the same jump from rugby league.

Cronulla followed a similar script in 2025. The Sharks touched down in LA and headed straight to Venice Beach, where former NFL running back Todd Gurley met the squad, having already trained with Cronulla players in Australia earlier that year. Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua, who has Polynesian heritage, has publicly backed the NRL's American push and named Saquon Barkley and Tyreek Hill as the NFL stars he reckons could cross over.

Two codes, watching each other closely

None of this is coincidence. Both sports are chasing the same thing: American eyeballs, and a genuine foothold in a market neither has ever properly cracked. The NRL got there first with real competition points on the line in Las Vegas. The NFL's Melbourne trip is a bigger, splashier swing at the same idea, playing on the home turf rugby league and AFL have owned for well over a century.

Whether either code turns a single showcase game into something lasting is the real question. But the groundwork already being laid, shared training facilities, players crossing codes, NFL stars publicly backing the NRL's push, suggests this isn't a one-off exchange. It's two sports circling the same opportunity from opposite sides of the Pacific.