Plenty to Work On For USA U20s
Plenty to Work On For USA U20s
Coming off Yesterday's 32-31 loss to Uruguay, the USA U20s have some work to do as they look ahead to pool games against Scotland and Zimbabwe.
For Head Coach Kyle Sumsion and the rest of the team certainly the job is to develop young players, but winning this tournament, and thus garnering entry into the U20 World Championships (recently won by France) would be an even tougher crucible in which to develop young players.
Now they need help. Because the final is a straight 1st in Pool A vs 1st in Pool B, the USA will now be hoping to get a three-way 2-1 tie and then win on bonus points or tiebreakers.
Sumsion, however, isn't looking that far ahead. He's concerned with Thursday's clash with Scotland.
"We are all disappointed in the result against Uruguay," said Sumsion. "Uruguay is a good team and we knew that the game would be a challenge. But we were not clinical enough as a team."
Errors in set piece—in scrums Uruguay won that battle and lineouts were decent, but could have been better. Yellow cards, other penalties, and losing the territorial battle all contributed.
"While we will be looking to greatly improve on those areas, I was pleased we were able to battle through adversity and challenges and stay in the fight until the final whistle," Sumsion continued.
Some of those challenges were out of their control—an obvious example is hooker Cade Crist falling ill the day before the game, forcing Hayden McKay to slot in at #2 instead of flanker and for Logan Ballinger to get the nod at openside. Everyone handled that fairly well, in fact. McKay is one of the teams backup hookers and he had a very good game. Ballinger, too, handled the surprise start well.
But some of their other challenges were self-inflicted.
That's where they can fix things—ensuring holding-on penalties are avoided and prime scoring chances are taken.
What Sumsion did not address was Uruguay's negative play, chiefly throwing away the ball on penalties they committed, and going off their feet in rucks in order to pin tacklers and prevent them from rolling away. Those two aspects should have been officiated more strictly, but the USA players also have to deal with them properly—don't start a Donnybrook over delaying a quick tap, and show demonstrably how hard you're trying roll away from the tackle.
What Sumsion did say was that the focus can't be on the opponent.
"As we look to Scotland our focus is on us and putting out a much better performance," he said.
The USA kicks off against Scotland on Thursday at 7AM ET and will be on Kenya Rugby's YouTube Channel.
