Well there’s no rest for the weary.

Several USA players get the day off tomorrow as Eagle Head Coach Mike Tolkin has shifted some players around for tomorrow’s Pacific Nations Cup clash with Tonga. The entire backline is changed from the previous game.

And there’s plenty to live up to, as the Eagles came away with a 23-18 victory after pushing Samoa in a 21-16 loss.

“Post Samoa, we knew we had plenty of work-ons,” said wing Blaine Scully, who is one of those players who won’t start tomorrow. But we also came away with plenty of positives as well. We demonstrated in the second half of Samoa our ability to control a game. We felt confident in our potential to do that for 80 minutes but we needed to demonstrate that. With another week of preparation under our belts, it allowed for us to gain more ownership of our team systems, which in turn prepared us for a more effective and complete performance against. Japan.”

Even so, it’s worth noting that the Eagles didn’t find a lot of room against the Brave Blossoms, being limited to one try (and six penalty kicks), and Scully said it was a case of good Japanese defense forcing the USA to bash through, not race around.

“That being said, we did create a few opportunities that we would have liked to have executed on,” said the former Cal All American. “In attack our mentality throughout the game was get into the right areas of the field and maintain possession. Often times that required an effective exit out of our own end, put them under pressure and start to squeeze them deep in their half. Defensively in the last five, we were under pressure. But maintaining our discipline, principles and structure was paramount to our successful stand at the end.”

So now to Tonga, a team that might leave a few gaps, but will be enormously physical, and will be begging the USA to get out of their structure.

“We need to continue working on ourselves,” Scully said of the game. “We will continue to hone our understanding of our systems, patterns and how we approach the game. While we will prepare for the threat Tonga poses, if we continue to own how we want to play and impose our structure to match, it should translate to a positive performance. What we are most interested in is building on performances. Constantly improving, constantly raising our standards.”