MELBOURNE (Reuters) - The National Rugby League's season-opening trip to Las Vegas has got off to a lively start with players ejected from their hotel after a brawl in an elevator and a marriage proposal accepted in the city of quickie weddings.
Canberra Raiders players Hudson Young and Morgan Smithies were marched out to apologise in front of the cameras on Monday after coming to blows at the Hilton Resorts World last week.
"I want to apologise for the actions on Thursday night. It wasn't good enough," Young told reporters.
"I'm embarrassed for myself, our teammates and the NRL."
The NRL, which features mostly Australian teams, has made an expensive five-year commitment to play games in Las Vegas, looking to carve out a slice of the huge American sports market where rugby league is barely a blip on the radar.
Last year's season-opening trip drew a reasonable crowd to Allegiant Stadium, the home of the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders, to watch a double-header between four NRL teams, though the games barely made a ripple in the U.S. TV market.
The NRL hailed the venture a stunning success.
Spearheaded by its tireless promoter Peter V'landys, the Australian Rugby League Commission chairman, the NRL has gone "bigger and bolder" this year, roping in teams from England's Super League.
Australia's national women's team will also play England as part of a bumper schedule of four matches on one Saturday afternoon.
It is a lot of rugby league for one U.S. city to handle but the NRL has already declared Las Vegas 2.0 a winner.
"The more we celebrate the opening of the NRL season, the better the Vegas venture is," said V'landys.
"This year there's a possibility that we'll actually return a profit on Vegas and if not, it'll be a small loss."
INFLATABLE BAT
While the NRL has devoted huge resources and manpower to put the show on, not everything goes to plan. A check-in bungle led to Smithies missing out on a hotel room and then coming to blows with Young in an elevator.
In an odd twist, it was not the brawling that sparked their ejection by the hotel but rather an inflatable baseball bat carried by a teammate which was caught on camera.
"That was mistaken as a weapon in the elevator but it played no role," said Young.
"We went downstairs to sort our room out and that's when they've reviewed the footage and asked us to leave."
The players were eventually able to return to the hotel after team and NRL officials smoothed things over.
While Young and Smithies apologised outside their hotel, their teammate Xavier Savage proposed to his partner Taliah Simbolon outside another Vegas hotel.
Simbolon accepted the offer of marriage in front of the Bellagio Resort and Casino, with the moment snapped by a Canberra Raiders team photographer and posted on 22-year-old Savage's Instagram feed.
It remains to be seen whether the NRL's efforts can help the game grow all across the United States, or whether what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Peter Rutherford)