The Pacific Nations Cup moves to Japan for the everyone except Tonga and Fiji, and those two teams will be in-country soon enough.
With one more round of pool games left we know where we sit, for the most part. Following the USA's 28-15 defeat of Canada and Samoa's 43-17 defeat of Tonga here's how the standings look:
| PNC Pool A | |||||||||
| Team | W | T | L | PF | PA | PD | BT | BL | Pt |
| Fiji | 1 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 16 | 26 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Samoa | 1 | 1 | 0 | 59 | 59 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Tonga | 0 | 1 | 0 | 17 | 43 | -26 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| PNC Pool B | |||||||||
| Team | W | T | L | PF | PA | PD | BT | BL | Pts |
| Japan | 1 | 0 | 0 | 55 | 28 | 27 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| USA | 1 | 0 | 0 | 28 | 15 | 13 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Canada | 0 | 2 | 0 | 43 | 83 | -40 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Canada is guaranteed to be in the 5th-6th game on September 14 at Prince Chichibu Memorial Stadium in Tokyo. Most likely they will play Tonga. However, mathematically, Tonga is not guaranteed to be 3rd in their pool but they'd have to beat Fiji by 27 points to avoid that. More likely, Fiji, despite the fact they will be playing Tonga in Tonga on Thursday (our time), will win their second game in a row.
Pool A looks like it will pan out with Fiji in 1st, Samoa in 2nd, and Tonga in 3rd.
In Pool B, then, Saturday, September 7 at 6AM ET (it's on Peacock), the USA plays Japan to decide who wins Pool B. Simple—win and you're #1. If the USA tied with a bonus point that Japan doesn't get, then they're #1. Any other scenario and Japan wins the pool.
Next up, after that, are the semifinals: #1 Pool A vs #2 Pool B September 14 at 6:05AM ET, and #1 Pool B vs #2 Pool A September 15 at 2:05AM ET. Both games at Prince Chichibu and both games on Peacock.
The losing teams play for 3rd on September 21 and the winning teams play for the championship on the same day.
For the USA, as Head Coach Scott Lawrence said in August, the big part of this is games. From August 17 through September 21 they will have been together for five weeks and played four meaningful test matches against tough teams.
