Madrid, Spain—The USA Men's 15s team held on for a tough 26-23 victory over Spain Saturday in Madrid, overcoming an early deficit and a late Spanish surge to end their November tour 3-0.
The three-match November series included close wins over Portugal and Spain, and an emphatic victory over Tonga. The Spain match should have been more heavily in the USA's favor, but they squandered a couple of prime try-scoring chances, and gave up a late try that made the game much closer than it needed to be.
“The things that we need to remember are important in test rugby are discipline and clean exits," said USA Head Coach Scott Lawrence. "Those two things - we were clean in the first half and in control and when we weren’t we were under pressure late in the game.”
Still, overall it has been a good 2024 for the USA, a year that included some key improvements.
“The team grew tremendously throughout the year," said Lawrence. "We started with a really young group in terms of caps, and you can see the incremental growth and both their game knowledge and accuracy, but also resiliency toward the end of the year. It’s important now that we work with the players on putting themselves in a good position to perform for their professional clubs when they go back. So in the short term that’s what the focus will be is that we want the players to go back and be afforded the minutes they need as international players in their professional teams. During the professional season we will work with those teams on co-development plans of their players.”
