The Los Angeles Rams spent months working out how to minimise the disruption of travelling to Melbourne. The solution they settled on was extraordinary: spend barely more than a day in Australia before kick-off.
Eight days after a 27–7 loss to San Francisco at the MCG, Sean McVay made it pretty clear he wasn't looking for a return visit.
“We're not playing in Australia ever again, I hope,” McVay told reporters this week, quickly adding that his reaction wasn't about the atmosphere.
It is an understandable response after an extraordinary road trip ended badly. It also raises an interesting question for the NFL as it plans more games in Melbourne. Perhaps the lesson from the first Australian game isn't simply about whether teams should arrive early or late. Maybe the league needs to decide what it actually wants an Australian trip to be.
The Rams arrived in Melbourne only 28 hours before kick-off. San Francisco had been here for a week. When the teams finally met in front of 100,021 people at the MCG, the 49ers won comfortably. Brock Purdy threw three touchdown passes, while the San Francisco defence restricted reigning MVP Matthew Stafford to 155 passing yards.
The temptation is to connect those dots. San Francisco arrived early, San Francisco won, therefore arriving early was better. McVay rejected that immediately after the game, saying he didn't believe the travel plan was the reason his team hadn't played well enough. He's right to push back on such a simple conclusion. One football game cannot tell us whether seven days of acclimatisation is better than 28 hours.
What it can do is start the conversation.
The Rams didn't arrive late by accident
Los Angeles knew exactly what it was doing. McVay and the Rams had investigated the trip well before September, including testing the journey with players and consulting specialists before settling on a plan designed to preserve as much of the team's normal weekly routine as possible. The Rams practised in California, left on Tuesday night and landed in Melbourne on Thursday before a 10:35am Friday kick-off.
San Francisco chose almost the opposite approach. The 49ers arrived the previous Friday and effectively set up camp in Melbourne for the week.
That difference wasn't limited to sleep and training.
San Francisco used its time in Australia to make itself visible. The club organised a week of fan activities, community events and meet-and-greets around Melbourne. Its own Australian diary documents players and the organisation moving through the city in the days leading into the game.
The Rams weren't absent from the promotional side. Their Australian operation created a fan hub at Crown's Riverwalk and ran community initiatives around the game. The franchise had also spent years establishing an Australian presence through trophy tours, NFL Flag activities and visits from former players and cheerleaders.
There was still a noticeable difference. The Rams' brand was in Australia well before Thursday. Most of the Rams' football team wasn't.
There was an interesting contrast at the MCG, too. Despite being the designated home team, the Rams entered to a mixture of cheers and boos. It would be too simplistic to attribute that to how long each team spent in Melbourne, but it was another reminder that an international game is about more than simply transporting two football teams to another stadium.
For an ordinary road game, that distinction wouldn't matter much. For the first NFL regular-season game ever played in Australia, it might.
What does the NFL want from Melbourne?
The Rams have been one of the franchises investing in Australia through the NFL's Global Markets Program. They hold Australian marketing rights alongside other NFL clubs and have specifically identified this part of the world as an important market.
That makes the Melbourne trip more than a scheduling inconvenience.
The crowd of 100,021 was the seventh-largest regular-season attendance in NFL history. Almost half of ticket holders travelled from interstate or overseas, according to the Victorian Government. The television numbers were significant as well: the NFL says the game averaged 21.7 million viewers globally, including 18.5 million in the United States, and became the most-watched NFL game ever in Australia.
Those numbers suggest Australia is worth more to the NFL than one Friday morning at the MCG.
This isn't a one-off experiment, either. The NFL's agreement with Victoria includes two Melbourne games with an option for a third.
That's where the league faces an unusual balancing act. A coach's responsibility is to prepare his team to win a football game. McVay wasn't employed to maximise Melbourne tourism or spend a week selling the Rams to Australian supporters. If his sports and medical staff believed keeping players in their normal routine was the best preparation, arriving late was a perfectly rational decision.
The NFL's objectives are broader. It wants international games to build audiences, attract commercial partners and turn occasional viewers into long-term supporters. It has described Australia as an important market and committed to coming back.
Those two priorities don't necessarily conflict, but Melbourne showed that they can pull in different directions.
The result doesn't settle the argument
There will inevitably be people who look at 27–7 and decide the Rams got the travel wrong. We don't know that.
San Francisco may simply have been the better football team on the day. There are dozens of reasons an NFL team wins or loses, and reducing a three-touchdown margin to the number of nights each side spent in Melbourne would be far too convenient.
The useful part is what happens next.
The NFL now has something it didn't have before September 11: real experience of bringing two teams to Australia using radically different preparation models. The Rams have information about how their players slept, recovered and performed after arriving late. San Francisco has the same information after arriving a week earlier. Both teams can also assess how they recovered after returning to the United States.
That evidence should matter when the next Melbourne game is planned.
The answer may eventually be seven days. It may be three or four. Another team might look at the Rams' research and make exactly the same decision McVay did. There may not even be one ideal approach for every club.
There is also a commercial lesson worth considering. If the NFL is asking Australian governments, sponsors and supporters to invest in these games, having NFL players physically present for more than a day creates opportunities that can't be replicated entirely through branding and organised fan zones.
That doesn't mean teams need to spend a week posing for photographs instead of preparing for football. But it may mean the NFL has to take greater responsibility for designing the Australian week. If the league wants teams to engage with Australian supporters, sponsors and communities, it can't simply hand each coaching staff a 12,700-kilometre logistical problem and hope their competitive priorities produce the same outcome.
McVay's responsibility was to give the Rams the best possible chance of beating San Francisco. The NFL's responsibility is different. It has to work out how bringing teams halfway around the world can grow the sport without compromising the football those teams came here to play.
Melbourne was the first attempt, not the finished model
McVay's comment makes a great headline, but it shouldn't be mistaken for a verdict on Australia.
He had just taken an NFL roster roughly 12,700 kilometres from Los Angeles, played a division rival and flown home. Kyle Shanahan has also indicated that repeating the Australian journey isn't high on his wish list. Coaches aren't likely to love adding one of the longest trips in professional sport to their schedules.
The NFL doesn't need them to love the flight. It needs to make the trip workable.
The first Melbourne game established that there is an audience here. More than 100,000 people at the MCG and record Australian television numbers are difficult to dismiss. It also exposed a question the league will have to answer before it comes back: how do you balance competitive preparation with the reason for travelling halfway around the world in the first place?
San Francisco spent a week in Melbourne and won 27–7. Los Angeles spent 28 hours here before kick-off and lost. That is interesting evidence, but it isn't proof of anything.
What Melbourne provided was a first test.
The NFL would be wasting it if the next teams simply started from scratch.