While the USA’s loss to Brazil is an almost devastating blow to the Eagles’ dreams of winning the ARC, and the worst rankings upset in World Rugby history, there are some mitigating factors that should give us all pause.

(Yes, I confirmed it with World Rugby, this is the largest rankings difference where the winner was the lower-ranked team - the win bumped Brazil up 4 spots … to 38th, and USA down 1 spot to 17th.)

You might call what I am about to write excuses, if you’ve a mind to. I don’t care. They’re also valid points.

1. Depth

Going into the ARC we were all very, very worried about how well the team would do because so many first-run players were out. Due to unavailability, retirement, or injury, the Eagles would go through the tournament without Tit Lamositele, Phil Thiel, Zach Fenoglio, Scott LaValla, Samua Manoa, Hayden Smith, Danny Barrett, Andrew Durutalo, AJ MacGinty, Seamus Kelly, Andrew Suniula, and Chris Wyles. (Suniula subsequently joined the team, but wasn’t expected to.)

In addition, the Eagles would be without Blaine Scully, Cam Dolan, Eric Fry, Taku Ngwenya, and Luke Hume for all but a game, or maybe two.

There were legitimate concerns that Alex Magleby, Dave Williams, and John Mitchell would be able to assemble a decent teams at all. The fact that they did - wisely reaping the fruit of the HSAA and USA U20 tree to do so - was a testament to how hard they worked. 

So they all did better than expected, helped by some veterans. But then those few veterans left, some players got injured, and the resulting team was what we had worried about before - a little unsettled, a little rudderless, and too inexperienced. 

 

2. Turnabout is fair play

Observers of the USA team have often dismissed an opponent as “Australia’s C team” or “Argentina’s C team.” I have always tried to be accurate about that issue, and it’s not always been true. We’ve already acknowledged that we’re worried about the depth of the program, and part of that is because many of the top rugby nations, with their pro leagues and funding, have a group of 30-40 players who are, for the most part, just as good as the other guys out there. 

Do you really think that if New Zealand replaced five of their players right now, they wouldn’t be great? Yet we get all offended if a few subs run out against the Eagles and the Eagles lose anyway, saying we lost to a lesser team.

OK, then, what about the USA team? The USA team that lost to Brazil wasn’t just missing a few players, it was missing almost two whole teams - more if you count recent retirements.

 Don’t believe me? OK, here is a team of recently capped players who couldn’t play against Brazil because of work, pro club needs, USA 7s team dibs, or injury:

1. Chris Baumann, 2. Zach Fenoglio, 3. Titi Lamositele, 4. Samu Manoa, 5. Greg Peterson, 6. Danny Barrett, 7. Todd Clever, 8. Cam Dolan, 9. Tom Bliss, 10. AJ MacGinty, 11. Luke Hume, 12. Folau Niua, 13. Seamus Kelly, 14. Taku Ngwenya, 15. Blaine Scully

(I don’t include Mike Petri here because he apparently could still make himself available, but hasn’t been asked.)

Next, here’s a list of players recently capped players (plus one or two very close to being capped) who could player for the same reasons:

Props Ben Tarr and Angus MacClellan, loose forwards Nate Brakeley, Andrew Durutalo, and Al McFarland; backs Will Holder, Nic Edwards, Moto Filikitonga, Lorenzo Thomas, Zack Test, and Brett Thompson.

Now, here’s a list of guys who would have been really useful but have retired from international rugby:

Props Nick Wallace and Mate Moeakiola, hooker Phil Thiel, locks Hayden Smith and Tai Tuisamoa, loose forwards Lou Stanfill, John Quill, Scott LaValla, and Kyle Sumsion, and fullback Chris Wyles.

That’s 36 guys who couldn’t play. Add in Eric Fry, brought in late to fill in and who didn’t start. He'd have been #37.

So take what you have left, fly them to Sao Paulo, and ask them to play against a team that has nothing to lose in front of a home crowd. Remember, our newbies before had all excelled surrounded by veterans and in front of a supportive home crowd. Now we had them wandering the Black Forest with only a few breadcrumbs and a fading candle for guidance.

 

3. Were they healthy?

I don’t know this for certain, so it’s pure speculation on my part, but the players looked enervated, and physically run down. My guess is that they might have run into something of a stomach bug. Certainly that might have explained some xor the selection choices. It also explained why some of the players appeared to be staggering around.

Back when I was coaching, I took a team from Washington to Milwaukee, and the different drinking water made half the team sick. Going to Brazil, it’s more of a risk. Go to the wrong restaurant, get a drink with ice made from the wrong water source, and you can get in serious trouble. (Remember USA 7s WNT Coach Julie McCoy and what she said when her team won in Hong Kong one year - we won thanks to soap, purell, and peanut butter sandwiches.)

Again, I can’t verify this, but I know people pretty well - some of those guys did not look well. And illness would explain why the support running was so poor.

 

4. This ones on the coaches

Maybe they were painted into a selections corner, but even so, they might have taken this game for granted. They learned a very sobering lesson. Against a team with nothing to lose, that punishes mistakes, can run, and can kick, you’ve got to be very, very solid in your game plan.

The USA had to be much more conservative in the early going, but instead played like a bunch of cocky young players who think they’ve got it all figured out, and would score six tries in the first ten minutes It backfired, big-time.

The coaching staff needed to have these guys fully and completely sure of what needed to be done, at least in the first 20 minutes. They probably had a game plan, but it wasn’t clear based on how the team played.

 

5. This ones on the players

Congratulations to the USA players for taking a complete and utter disaster, and bringing it back to a winning position. Down 18-0, they pulled themselves together and outscored Brazil 23-3 for the next 55 minutes. I was impressed by that. But they also made some crucial mistakes - losing the ball in contact on numbers occasions was one - do it once to twice and it’s down to a sweat-covered ball; do it after that and it’s just being careless.

 

But I want to focus on the following:

The first USA try was exactly how the Eagles should have played all along - using tight play to suck in defenders, crash Suniula up hard with plenty of rockers, quick ball and do the same with someone like Joe Taufete’e. They did that very rarely.

At the end of the first half, the Eagles got a penalty, and had a lineout and a chance to make a scoreline of 18-8. First, James Bird had a 22-meter dropout and clearly wanted to kick deep and have the ball roll into touch. Instead, he kicked it out on the full. Still the Eagles got a break with a penalty (and yellow card) on a no-wrap tackle that looked fine to me. Kick to touch, lineout in the Brazil half. Then the thrown was not straight.

Late in the game, the Eagles made two huge mistakes that cost them the game. #1, with the score USA 23 Brazil 21, a penalty inside their half, they opted to have JP Eloff kick for posts. This was a dumb idea because a) the humidity made it unlikely the kick would make it, b) Eloff does not have that sort of range anyway, and, crucially, c) there was not much time left on the clock, and all the Eagles needed to do was kick for touch, and maul it down the field to run out the clock. Eloff missed, and Brazil had another shot.

#2. With time almost up, and USA still had the ball and resolved to run out the clock with the forwards. This often backfires, because the ruck is the most common area of penalties. The USA set a ruck, and Niku Kruger stood there for an age and a half figuring out what to do next. The players in the ruck started to do the same, and were not set square in the ruck. The result was a penalty against, and then Brazil did what the USA should have done, and mauled it until they got a penalty. 

Those mistakes were mistakes of youth, inexperience, lack of time together. You have got to hope they won’t be made again.

 

So I am not happy about the loss. I am not happy about the mindless kicking, or the lack of support for forwards crashing up the middle, and I am not happy about the decision-making. But, sometimes it happens. It happens with young players. It happens with young players who don’t know each other very well. It happens with young players who don’t low each other very well and who are not feeling 100% and who are in strange and hostile territory.

 

That’s why they call it a test match.