The USA Men’s National Team forwards assembly finished up this weekend and Eagles Forwards Coach Justin Fitzpatrick was all smiles.

“It went very well; we’re very, very pleased with it,” said the Seattle Saracens Head Coach. “We were especially pleased with the volume of work we’re able to get through.”

Some have said this is the first unit-specific assembly the Eagles have ever had - we’re not been able to verify that, but it is certainly a rarity. The Eagles brought in scrum consultant Didier Retiere from the French Rugby Federation to work on the scrum and Nick Kennedy from London Irish - Fitzpatrick’s old club - to work on the lineout.

“It’s about cross-pollination of ideas, and the outside influences and different voices are really helpful,” said Fitzpatrick. 

The scrum, of course, was a huge topic of conversation. The USA has not had a scrum that they can depend on - unless you mean they can depend on it to surrender penalties - so Retiere had his work cut out. What would have been perfect would have been to also have the USA players playing overseas to participate, and thus create more unit among the pack.

That didn’t happen, but several front-line players, along with those trying to break into the top squad, were there.

“It’s the reality of what we have to deal with,” said Fitzpatrick. “The reality is that we don’t have one competition with our best players playing against each other. We have something like four. So we need to get other benchmarks for our players.”

This camp was in part about setting that benchmark for newer players, and in part getting the nomenclature down so when the full team comes together no one is learning the lineout calls from square one. 

Does one weekend do the job? Fitzpatrick said, you’d be surprised.

“In a regular week of assembly we’d go through a couple of practices and then be preparing for a match,” said the coach. “So to have time together when we’re not getting ready for a game, and instead working on individual technique, working on what we can do as a unit, and developing that was like a month’s assembly for us.”

The forwards camp was full of players just out of college programs (and one or two still in them). Props Nick Wallace (St. Mary’s, Chuckanut U19s), Ben Tarr (USA U20s), Angus MacLellan (Davenport, Traverse Bay U19s), Demecus Beach (Davenport), Olive Kilifi (West Seattle U19s), and Chris Baumann got invaluable time together. Hookers Zach Fenoglio (Loyola-Marymount) and Phil Thiel (Life University, Traverse Bay U19s) are two of the more experienced players in camp, and Mike Shepherd (Utah and Indiana, Brownsburg) is right there with them.

At second row, John Cullen (Utah), Ben Landry (Wisconsin-Whitewater,Parkway Patriots), Brodie Orth (Park Hill U19s), and Lou Stanfill (Cal, Jesuit) are an excellent cross-section of players who have been developed in high school and with the national age-grade programs, and those who were multi-sport athletes.

The flanker position also had a heavy college influence, with Alec Gletzer (Santa Barbara Rugby Academy, Cal), Mike Lawrenson (Kutztown), Ben Pinkelman (Colorado State), and Kyle Sumsion (BYU, Highland).

Only three of the players invited, John Quill, Al McFarland, and Matt Trouville could be the old style of player - trained overseas and moved here as an adult to play club rugby.

USA Forwards Camp with Current Clubs