"The England match showed our character," said Head Coach Neets Gericke. "We had to shuffle our roster right before warmup. The boys showed strength in the face of adversity."
The shuffle was perhaps cruelest for Finn Love, who had yet to play and then was too ill to take the field. He and the only other player without any minutes, Life West hooker Salesi Kafovalu, will get their chance against Ireland.
But as to the players on the field, they did everything they could and were impressive on attack. Yes the defense could have been better, but the positives are there.
"As a team we are getting better in all aspects of the game," continued Gericke. "Some areas quicker than others. Everyone stepped up. We play a team sport and as a collective we scored six tries and we also leaked 10 tries. But we are getting better each day, on and off the field, as we continue to build experience and valuable connections."
Meanwhile, USA Men's Head Coach Scott Lawrence, who is essentially the Director of Rugby for the men's programs, was watching.
"I think we are seeing a difference in the environment from which the players come from," said Lawrence. "I think there's some really talented players there. But how do you judge our team? It comes back to how do you judge the objectives" Did they get better from the first game to the second game? I think, absolutely, they did. There is some talent there that I've certainly got my eye on, and the coaching staff has got our eye on."
Lawrence, pointing to Dom Besag, noted that he's not afraid to bring players straight from the U20s to the senior Eagles, but they have to be the right player. There's nothing wrong with letting a player work his way through.
Over, he added, "there are some areas where we're probably behind. But ultimately what you want from your U20s is to produce a handful of players that go forward and become professionals and go from there. You can see the difference in game IQ between players that came out of the U18 program and went to a lower level of competition to those who went to a higher. You can see the difference in their play. So if their goal is to be [USA captain] Jason Damm then they need to make good choices around where they're going to put their time, and where they're going to play coming out of high school."
Next up for the USA is Ireland, a team that lost to England by a try and then lost to Argentina by almost the same score as the USA lost to England, 62-40.
If this game winnable for the USA? How about we say this ... another step of improvement, plus some health improvement, and the Junior Eagles could well show something more.
