After enjoying a healthy lead over Canada for much of the game, the USA Men’s National Team found themselves up only 20-16.

Canada, by virtue of a try from Nick Blevins, had pulled within a try. USA scrumhalf Mike Petri, who had lost his fitting trying to tackle Blevins, said captain Chris Wyles rallied the team.

“Canada certainly upped the tempo in the second half,” Petri told Goff Rugby Report. “We got a yellow card and that didn’t help. But Chris has been doing a great job of reining us in and getting us re-focused. He brought us together and said we knew as a group what we hadn’t been doing, and we just needed to keep playing the way we know we can, and we could finish it off.”

And boy did they finish it off. Petri was in the middle of it, chasing after a loose ball and securing it before popping to a trailing Andrew Durutalo for one try, and then, after two strong mauls from the Eagle forwards, Petri faked a pass to Blaine Scully and dove over untouched. That sealed it.

“Blaine’s an amazing athlete and he draws a lot of attention, so when I saw he was standing off I figured they’d want to cover him,” said the scrumhalf. The dummy was bought wholeheartedly by Canada flanker Nanyak Dala, and Petri could have strolled over.

“We just finished off the game playing the way we know we can play,” said Petri. “We were able to spend the buildup getting back to the basics, and also spending a lot of time working on playing together. We were able to get through them and that was a huge confidence boost for us. The forwards laid down a great platform - they all played amazing - and the backs were able to show some stuff. My try, like all of the tries, was the result of a lot of hard work by the forwards.”

The USA now looks ahead to Harlequins at PPL Park in Chester, Pa. That will be a non-cap game, and then the Eagles finish up their pre World Cup series with Australia at Soldier Field September 5.