Over 70 athletes converged on Houston to try out for the Houston Strikers Major League Rugby team in an open combine on Saturday.

Players were put through a series of physical tests, fitness tests, and skills tests to see if they might potentially make the club at the Athlete Training Health facility.



Neil McMillan, who played pro rugby in Ireland and coached extensively in the USA, is the director of training systems at Athlete TH and helped administer the combine's workouts, including a five-set shuttle run known as the Bronco Test.

"This has been a pretty tough day," McMillan said. "We went through… linear speed, timed 40, lateral agility, T-drill -- and they just finished a nice easy Bronco Test. Professional rugby players need kind of a little bit of everything. We need strength endurance. We need speed endurance. In general, the Bronco's probably one of the tests we look at the most probably because stamina is [needed] across the board for every position in rugby."



Strikers assistant coach Sam Windsor said he was "overwhelmed with the success" of the combine and impressed with "the participation numbers, and, more important, the effort the boys put in."

It was a hot day with temperatures in the triple digits, but the athletes worked hard and, Windsor added, listened.

"The attitude was probably the biggest [positive]," he said. "We asked a lot of the boys and we needed them to buy into the whole day. There's a lot of responsibility on them."



All of the combine participants competed under the watchful eye of the coaches, especially Strikers head coach Justin Fitzpatrick.



As for what Fitzpatrick and his coaches saw, Windsor said, "Some of the results we got in the physical testing were really impressive, and the skill level was very high standard as well."




Five players from the Cy Fair High School program showed up, and Windsor said the young group fit right in during the tryout. The Strikers do expect to select some players from this combine.

After seeing what the athletes had to offer, Windsor said, "We're even more excited now."