In our analysis of the USA v Italy game we’ve come up with a few key areas that made a difference, one way or the other.

Refereeing - let’s get this out of the way early. Referee Mariu Van Der Westhuizen did pretty well in a number of areas, but he made a couple of key missteps, as well as some smart, gutsy calls. The gutsy call of the penalty try for the USA was right and fair, but took guts to do, for sure.

He also pinged Italy for holding onto the ball in the ruck a few times. The problem? He didn’t do it enough. Italy held onto the ball when isolated in the breakdown, or when a USA player was there to take it, far too often. Maybe this was a case of interpretation, but it was critical anyway.

The referee also was kind of one-sided on his penalties in the scrums, conveniently ignoring an obvious boring-in penalty in a late scrum that could have been crucial. And his call of a penalty at the end of the game was nothing short of laughable.

Those calls in the scrum were important.

The breakdown, of course, was a main source of penalties - and key non-calls. Colleen McCloskey photo.

The USA lineout functioned well, even when one of the go-to guys, Greg Peterson, left injured. David Barpal photo.

Up in the air for the kick, Todd Clever battles for the ball. The kick chase was part of the kicking game, too. Colleen McCloskey photo.

And scrums ... a good platform of which to launch tries (the Eagles did that), and a great source of penalties for the opposition. David Barpal photos.

Penalties

The Eagles gave up, by our (admittedly fallible) count, 12 penalties to Italy’s 8. Holding on in the tackle was pinged three times on each side. Collapsing the scrum was pinged twice. Not rolling away or not releasing the tackled player was pinged twice. It’s hard to see who as penalized the most but it looks like Tony Lamborn got nailed for a couple of ruck infractions, and Todd Clever was offside in the scrum or maul three times.

The Kicking Exchange

When the teams kicked back and forth, the USA faired the better. This might strike you as surprising - it did us. But in seven kicking exchanges, the USA ended up with these outcomes: 30-meter gain and the lineout, no gain for Italy and USA scrum, minimal gain for Italy and a USA lineout, a counter-attack for a try, and a net gain of about five meters. In the other two, one was a wash, and Italy got the better of territory in the other. The kicking game led to ten points for the USA. Well done Eagles - mostly AJ MacGinty and Will Holder, but some others, including Mike Te’o, as well.

Set Piece

USA won 10 of their 12 lineouts, while Italy was 16-for-18. Both teams won all of their scrums, but the USA was penalized much more often. Still - the Eagles scored a try that began with a scrum.

Turnovers

We counted 17 turnovers in the USA’s favor (not counting kicks to touch). Nate Augspurger caused two, AJ MacGinty caused two, as did Cam Dolan and Joseph Taufete’e and Tony Lamborn, who had a great debut.

The USA gave up seven turnovers - no one gave up more than one. Most of these were failed offloads or losing the ball in contact.

Gaining Territory

Italy did a better job as gaining small pieces of territory over a period of phases, while the Eagles had more bigger breaks, but sometimes nullified those with poor passes behind their support. As we have seen before (and at least this writer keeps forgetting), AJ MacGinty is one of the chief ground-gainers. This tends to happen late in the game after the midfield has made enough of an impression on the opposing defense. The Eagles also ran Taku Ngwenya up the middle once. He then got hurt, but it would have been nice to see more of that.

Both teams handled the ball fairly well. That sequence where Te'o caught and passed with no time to set up Lamborn was a thing of beauty.

Italy's ability to nudge past the gain line is a bit worrying. The Eagles tackled, and covered misses well, but bent a little more than Italy.

Points Sources

The USA got ten points from winning the kicking game, and ten more from good running and passing. Italy got all of their points with significant help from USA penalties. One try came from a big break down the sideline, but didn’t actually happen until two penalties later.