It didn't really last. The Eagles were poor against an improving Great Britain and completely overmatched by South Africa.

Automatic Olympic Qualification

A top four berth is almost certainly out of reach. The top four teams in the World Series standings going into Hong Kong all earned more points than the USA did. The 6th-place team, South Africa, also did better than the USA, expanding their lead. So while the Eagles gained on Ireland, Samoa, and Australia, they needed to do more. The Eagles now need to start making podiums and need to be bumping France, Fiji, and South Africa off the podiums ... ideally out of the quarterfinals.

But this USA team gets caught out too much on defense, still has trouble reading each other, and don't dominate the restart game the way they should.

That's all a recipe for inconsistent rugby. Key among those factors, we think, is restarts. When the Eagles win restarts, they score tries. When they get stuck on defense, they don't have the understanding throughout the squad to steal ball back and punish turnovers.

Positives

USA Head Coach Mike Friday points to some positive things, and, yes, there are positives ... for a team that won't make the top four. For a team building to a qualifier tournament in Canada in the summer, yes, there are good takeaways.

“There were some huge positives. Our defensive work over the weekend was exceptional. We made some real moves forward there. There were little inconsistencies in our attacking play, and we need to make the small details right. There were small mistakes at critical times and that cost us, and that was the story Friday night in the game against Spain," said Friday. "I thought we rallied well on Saturday and put ourselves in a decent position on both sides of the ball. In that quarterfinal against Great Britain, there was a little bit of frustration; small errors were the difference between winning and losing. That’s where we are as a team at the moment. We’re growing, we’re showing signs and putting in some great performances, but that inconsistency because we’re still growing as a group is causing us to ride this rollercoaster."

One more positive? Canada is worse. Canada is a bad rugby team at the moment. They don't have the intellectual anchor to help them make smart team decisions; they aren't, overall, fast enough, and they are not good defensively. 

When Canada was very good they hurt people and they played vertical 7s—charge, offload, repeat—very well. 

Milestones

In all of this it's worth making note of a couple of milestones. Stephen Tomasin passed 1,000 World Series points during the Hong Kong 7s. This is a remarkable achievement, especially for someone who was rarely the main goalkicker for his team. He now was 1,011 points, 27th all-time. Perry Baker now has 255 tries (he actually bypassed 250 in LA but we didn't mention it) and is solidly at 3rd all-time. 

Can the catch the amazing Dan Norton, who has 358? Last year we would have said no. But Baker seems kind of ageless. He is 36 (older than Norton, who has retired) and he is tied for 5th in the World Series with 27 tries. That's pretty astonishing right there. What business does Baker have scoring 27 tries this season? 

By the way, the only player still playing on the World Series circuit who is in the top 15 all-time in tries is South Africa's Siviwe Soyizwapi, who is 30 years old and is over 100 tries behind Baker. What we'd like to see is Baker stay with us at least through the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. That would mean 10 more World Series tournaments, and while that won't be enough to score the 103 tries needed to catch Norton, it could be enough to see him overhaul Collins Injera for 2nd all-time.

Just spare a thought for this player, who has done things no one ever thought a USA player could do.

Next Up

The USA plays in Singapore in just over two days. They have a very tough pool in France, Uruguay, and Kenya. That's a pool where this USA team could go 3-0 or 0-3 or somewhere in between. It's an excellent test of where they are as a group.