The USA Men's 7s team moved to 1-0-1 with a fairly clinical 24-12 win over Samoa in the 2nd round of the Wellington 7s.

The Eagles were playing without Brett Thompson, who sustained another cruel injury in training this week. Having traveled withouth a 13th squadmember in order to save money, the USA drafted  in Pago Haini, who plays rugby locally in the Wellington area. They didn't really need Haini, though, as the Americans put in a pretty solid first half of rugby.

An early break from Martin Iosefo, who has started the tournament on fire, got the USA going forward, and then the ball was zipped back across the field - with a couple of impressive passes, to Perry Baker, who did the rest. Madison Hughes converted for the 7-0 lead. Right after that, from a penalty, Danny Barrett went on a charge, was stopped just short of the line, but found Stephen Tomasin who popped to Folau Niua, who just needed to fall over to score.

That made it 12-0. Samoa exploited a missed tackle by Andrew Durutalo to close the gap to 12-7, but with 30 seconds left in the half, Samoa's restart went out on the full. That meant a free kick for the Americans, and they made it work. Hughes took a half gap, and while his pass rolled on the floor, Baker managed to gather it, sidestep a chaser, and then take off. He linked with Niua - who has been everywhere so far - and Niua found Iosefo for the try under the posts and a 19-7 halftime lead.

In the second half, the game slowed down somewhat, which suited the USA just fine. Danny Barrett almost did his bull-in-a-china-shop thing for a try but was stopped. Soon thereafter, though, an impressive and elusive run from Matai Leuta got the Americans into the Samoan 22, and then he passed off and worked his way around to get the return offload and score one of the nicer team tries you will see.

Samoa scored at the end of the game, but the USA was in control, 24-12. The Eagles have 2-0 New Zealand left, and are not secure in Pool C. If they lose to New Zealand and France beats Samoa, and the combined losing margin for the USA and winning margin for France is 20 or more, then France will finish 2nd in the pool instead of the Eagles. If the combined margins are 19, then the USA needs to make sure France doesn't score three more tries than the USA in the final game.

And if they're tied on tries difference, it will come down to points scored. The USA leads France 45 to 35 with one game to go.

USA 24

Tries: Baker, Iosefo, Niua, Leuta

Convs: hughes 2

Samoa 12

Tries: Motuga, perez

Convs: Mealoi