USA hoping to make England sweat in humid encounter as number of familiar faces line up against Eddie Jones’s side
England may be looking to use Thursday’s match with the USA to rotate players but for the Americans, this will be their opening match at the Rugby World Cup and a rare opportunity to test themselves against the very best.
Ranked 13th in the world, a good performance from the Eagles in Japan is seen as important to continue the sport’s growth Stateside, particularly after they failed to win a single match four years ago.
World Rugby chief executive Brett Gosper has also hinted that North America could be in line to host the 2031 World Cup as part of the governing body’s global growth strategy.
Read more: England kick way to Tonga win in World Cup opener but errors suggest work still to be done
Familiar faces
The task of claiming a win at the tournament looks fairly ominous this time around too, though, as the USA find themselves in a group that also contains France, Argentina and Tonga.
Full-back Will Hooley, however, insists: “We are absolutely not here to make up the numbers.”
Hooley is orginally from Cambridge, came through the Northampton academy, now plays for Bedford Blues and is just one of a number of the USA team whom England will be familiar with.
Fly-half AJ MacGinty was signed by Sale Sharks in 2016 from Pro14 side Connacht in his native Ireland to replace the departing Danny Cipriani and has made 49 appearances for them since, including 40 in the Premiership.
New Zealand-born Harlequins centre Paul Lasike also starts for the USA, while Saracens’ Titi Lamositele joins Worcester’s Joe Taufete’e in a formidable-looking front row completed by Toulouse youngster David Ainu’u.
They will be captained by former Leicester and Cardiff Blues wing Blaine Scully, while the second row will be comprised of Ben Landry, who was at Ealing Trailfinders last season, and Doncaster’s Nick Civetta.
Kicking in behind
Despite lacking the quality of England’s starting XV, this is the first World Cup in which USA have a fully professional squad, and they will present a different challenge for Eddie Jones after completing two weeks of training with the Marines.
They will not have the physical prowess of Tonga – few do – but they should come into this match at the peak of their physical fitness and will likely look to use fast defensive line speed and the kicking of MacGinty to pin England back as much as possible.
The distribution from Hooley and MacGinty in particular will be key to their hopes and the kicking from their fly-half was crucial in last month’s Pacific Nations Cup win over Samoa in similar conditions, with humidity expected to hit 78 per cent today in Kobe.
England, on the other hand, want to get the game wrapped up early on this time around.
Jones said this week that England “deliberately rope-a-doped against Tonga” and “let them play for the first 20 minutes with the intention to come home strong”.
“Against the USA we want to take a different approach. We want to take them at the start of the game, go out pretty hard, attack them a bit more and see where it leads us,” he added.
USA head coach Gary Gold declined to engage with Jones’s remark that the Eagles would “be like 15 Donald Trumps”.
“At this stage, with all due respect, we’re not a good enough rugby team to be making comments or answers to questions like that,” said Gold, who had a stint as assistant coach of his native South Africa.
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It was a humble and perhaps realistic acceptance of their inferiority, but despite acknowledging this, Gold said his team would play to their own strengths rather than trying to stop England.
Not known for their ball carrying or work with the ball in hand, the USA pose a different test to the Tonga bombardment.
It will give England the opportunity to practise different aspects of their game as they continue to build toward facing Argentina and a final group game against France that is likely to determine who tops Pool C.