The Eagles’ 35-35 tie with an Argentina XV in a non-cap game in the Americas Rugby Championship was a game full of qualifiers.

It was an imperfect performance, to be sure, but considering the team had only had a week together under a new coaching staff, it could have been much worse.

The USA could have won the game, but in the end did enough to secure a tie against a group of players who are in full-time academy training.

The defense let in five tries, but a couple of those were lucky tries, and the offense scored four.

Head Coach John Mitchell was of the same mind, pleased with some things, and displeased with others.

“Considering the short preparation and our being more knowledge-based rather than getting into the intensity and tempo we want to train at and bring this team up to, it was good,” Mitchell told Goff Rugby Report. “The intent’s good. Clearly the accuracy, intensity, and decision-making will need to grow.”

Mitchell said the team was up and down throughout the game - as could be tracked by the scoreline - a 13-0 start, behind 21-16 at halftime, for example.

“Our second 20 minutes was where we lost our concentration and our ability to stay in structure,” said Mitchell. “Whether that was mental or physical  - probably a bit of both - that was a period where we lost our way. We got back into the contest in the 3rd 20, but we were a little bit indecisive in the back 50, getting out.”

Mitchell said the result was what the team deserved, and added that it was never going to be a polished performance the first time out, what with so many debutants in the team.

“It’s the small effort areas, not so much the glory things [we’re looking at],” he added. “it’s a lot of the stuff off the ball where the penny has to drop. But we’ve only just started.”

Among the positive aspects of Saturday’s performance was how quickly the team managed to get on the same page. As Mitchell said, he and his coaching staff were coming at things from a more technical aspect, and didn’t talk much about playing with pride or passion - he got that anyway. But he also go some flashes of unity.

“It was a tough week,” said Mitchell. “You’re conscious of keeping it really simple, but we need to put in the new detail in order to move the role of the individual team members forward.”

The scrum, especially, performed well. And while the Eagles had a considerable size advantage - there’s the qualifier again - Argentina has an excellent tradition in the scrum and smaller or not might have expected to hold their own. Instead, on several occasions, the Argentinian pack was monstered.

“A lot of that is down to our forwards coach Marty Veale and his work with the group in that area,” said Mitchell. “They’ve had some attention to detail they probably haven’t come across before. A lot of the little things they did in the week were collective, and they took pride in that area. Obviously we’ve got to learn to integrate better with the rest of the team, but it was a good start.”

Several players made special contributions on Saturday. Eric Fry seemed a new man at loosehead and he was the driving force in a solid front row of Joseph Taufete’e and Chris Baumann. Brodie Orth, who was not even expected to be in the squad for two weeks before Matt Trouville injured himself, was effective in the lineout and got a lot of work done. Orth made himself available at the last minute and took his opportunity.

“One of the huge successes is Brodie,” said Mitchell. “The passion and the emotion had for the situation is what test rugby is all about.”

No. 8 David Tameilau was also notable, getting involved offensively - setting up Taku Ngwenya’s try - and making some thundering tackles.

“Look out when that boy’s fit, eh?” enthused Mitchell. “He did a lot of things that were very good. Of course he needs to become more connected without the ball, things youngsters take a while to learn. He’s going to have to work on getting his fitness levels up.”

Ngwenya was perhaps the veteran who was really noticeable, scoring a nice try and tackling well, also.

Now the work is underway to build on this. It’s a process, said Mitchell, but a tie in the opener - he’ll take that.