Packing up his apartment in Washington one afternoon, Jack Iscaro had no idea that his next trip home wouldn’t come until after Top 14 semi-final in front of 67,000 fans.
Called as a medical joker French Stadium in October 2025, the Eagles loosehead has since become a fixture in one of French rugby’s most feared feuds, earning a contract extension within two months and playing his part in the Parisians’ remarkable turnaround.
Reflecting on the whirlwind of his arrival, Iscaro admitted the move came as almost a surprise, even to him.
“I spoke on Zoom with the two coaches, and it was more of a conversation, like, ‘Oh, well, when you get there,'” Iscaro told RugbyPass. ‘And I was like, ‘Oh, well, I’ll go, I guess.’
‘I basically moved out of my apartment that day and two days later I was on a flight. I didn’t leave until the next year, until we lost in the semi-finals.’
Born in Germany for an Italian father and an American mother, the 29-year-old’s journey to Paris was anything but conventional. His father, a Roman who played at a high level before injury forced him into coaching, introduced him to the game, with a weekend Six Nations on dubious websites that would crash every few seconds.
He later served as one of his coaches at Gonzaga College High School, and his father became more than a parent at practice, a dynamic that Iscaro credits with strengthening their bond.
“It took away the father-son weirdness, and it was more like he was a coach or a friend,” he said. “I think it actually helped our relationship a lot.”
Few schools in American rugby can match what Gonzaga has built. Immersing himself in the culture of the Washington DC powerhouse, Iscaro painted a picture of a program that is unmatched in the state.
‘There is nowhere else in the US that has the depth they do,’ he explained. ‘It’s about 900 children, a school for boys, and when I was there, close to 300 children were playing. It was at least four to five teams deep, and there were no cuts.’
‘We would travel almost every weekend to play the best teams around the US, and we would go overseas once a year for spring break. We hadn’t won a national championship yet, and then we won two in a row while I was there, and then they won the third one after that and started a little bit of a dynasty.’
Yet that dynasty grew from humble roots.
‘When it first started, they weren’t allowed to use the school name because they were just a club,’ he said. ‘They called themselves the Eye Street Rugby Club, because that’s the street in DC Gonzaga. It built interest and legitimacy, and then it grows from there.’
Clearly highlighting rugby’s affordability and success as the twin engines behind that growth, Iscaro believes the model holds lessons for the broader American game, particularly for athletes whose soccer careers have stalled.
Long believed to be an unmet market, the opportunity for American football players to transfer their athleticism to rugby is something that Gonzaga has promoted to great success.
“They were football players all their lives and realized that they might not give up anymore, so they tried something else and realized that their sports career doesn’t have to end there,” said Iscaro.
Continuing with his high school days, Iscaro had several opportunities to consider collegiate rugby. Instead of taking the comfortable route to Penn State, where his brother played and where he already knew the coaches, Iscaro headed west to Cal, a decision he made with the sole priority of testing himself in an unfamiliar environment.
‘I could probably tell you what my next four years would look like if I went there, and it would probably start with me doing pretty well from the start and not being too challenged,’ he said.
‘When I got to Cal I realized I was a pretty good rugby player but there were levels in rugby and I didn’t want to just go through it.
‘I definitely wasn’t a superstar when I first got there.’
I’m coming home to join Old Glory DC at the end of his college career, Iscaro took his first steps in the field of professional rugby. Far from a childhood dream, the humble Iscaro felt privileged to represent his hometown in a team that didn’t even exist when he was growing up.
Thrown in at the deep end in an MLR era loaded with imported talent, it was sink or swim for the dynamic slugger.
‘Each team’s first signing was usually a disruption to the international community,’ he said. ‘I remember being really frustrated at times because I was fighting a lot of these big foreign hardliners.
At the height of his frustration, his situation was put into perspective by his coach at the time: ‘Well, if you want to play international rugby, I don’t know how to tell you, they’re all going to be foreigners.’
‘In that sense, it actually prepared me quite well. I had an organization that was willing to trust me and play me a lot.’
Fittingly, it was on French soil that the Top 14 doors creak for the first time. Starring against Tonga at Chambéry in November 2024, Iscaro pulled ahead Bordeaux cornerstone Ben Tameifuna and left with a handful of scrum penalties. A French-based agent followed, then the best part of a year of silence, before the injury crisis in Paris finally opened the door.
Handed the start against Castres Olympique within days of landing, Iscaro gave credit to the Paris club for supporting untested goods.
‘They took a chance on an American prop to come and play, which I think a lot of teams probably wouldn’t even consider me for that reason alone,’ he said.
‘For them to bring me in and then to support me and sign me, I’m extremely grateful.’
Heading into a nine-month campaign, almost twice as long as anything he’s experienced at MLR, Iscaro is packing daily against respected tight ends Giorgi Melikidze and Paul Alo-Emile, two scrummagers he rates among the best in the league.
Breaking down the dark arts of the French scrum, the loosehead was vivid in his description.
‘It’s like chess against checkers,’ Iscaro was clearly pleased to explain.
‘Listening in the southern hemisphere is very honest and direct; they will put you low and pass through you. In the Top 14, you’re dealing with everything you can imagine, from corners to games, and the starting stalwarts versus the backup and how they fight can be night and day.’
‘To win a penalty in the Top 14 in front of the home crowd is probably one of the better feelings you can have.’
Enjoying a pack that nearly doubled the number of penalties for the next team last season, Iscaro is determined to transplant that culture into the Eagles lineup where head coach Scott Lawrence has given him a leading voice on the set.
“It was probably the best scrum culture buy I’ve ever been a part of or seen,” he said. ‘How do I get people to want to buy something as good as these guys? You’re trying to build something, instead of telling people what to do.’
That task has extra weight Rugby World Cup 2027 is just one year away now. Drawn in Group E, the Eagles open against France in Melbourne on October 2 before the showdown Samoa in Perth and Japan to Adelaide.
Most importantly, Iscaro isn’t the only battle-hardened American front rower in France. Stade Toulouse’s David Ainu’u, who joined the club’s academy as a teenager in 2017, boasts a trophy cabinet most internationals would envy and the pair lined up against each other in just Iscaro’s third Top 14 outing.
“I don’t think a lot of people even know he’s an American here,” Iscaro said. ‘He has a lot of respect in the Top 14 because of his fight and his ability. He is a different example of an American; he passed the path of espoir, became JIFF and won god knows how many titles.’
Throw in Tonga Kofe’s recent spell at Leicester, and Iscaro believes a ripple effect is being created, with recruits sitting up and taking notice whenever a rival club pounces on the American prop.
Moving toward Lawrence’s Project Moonshot 2031, which aims for the quarterfinals on home soil, Iscaro envisions a stable MLR that exports its best talent to the world’s top leagues while filling those spots with young Americans hungry for playing time.
But in a refreshingly candid moment, the Paris prop refused to sell the overseas dream as easy.
‘If I’m being completely honest, it’s really hard,’ he said. ‘You have to know what you want from rugby. I couldn’t go to any of my friends’ weddings. My brother and his wife had my first nephew and I’m not here for that.’
‘You’re committed to an 11-month season last year, and you’re probably at a disadvantage counting as a foreign player, so you really have to prove yourself.’
Still, Iscaro is confident the raw material is there, pointing to the vast number of American athletes who never make it to the NFL or NBA.
‘I think about all these basketball players and football players who were just incredible,’ he said. ‘I understand, your dream was to play in the NFL, and maybe it didn’t work out, but that didn’t have to be the end of your athletic career.’
‘So, hey, do you still want to play in front of 70,000 people and make a good living from professional sports? There are possibilities there.’
As for 2031, Iscaro remains optimistic, encouraged by how smoothly the United States hosted the FIFA World Cup this summer. However, it is clear to him where the responsibility lies.
‘I think it has the power to put more eyes on it and bring legitimacy to it,’ he said. ‘But a strong presence of your country’s national team at the World Cup is important. We always talk about inspiring, but our effort to play well and to inspire is also very important.’
From Eye Street Rugby Club to Sunday’s Top 14 action, Iscar’s journey is a testament to what the American road can produce. And if the Eagles can bottle even a fraction of that French scrum culture, Australia 2027 has the potential to be a historic campaign for Scott Lawrence and his Eagles.