This is awesome. simply an awesome game for us. THat was a determined "all-in" team who played today. To be fair England looked terrible and that Phil Vickery kick in the knee should have been a red card. That being said I was very proud of our guys, this was a an absolute storming performance. Pity it will be hidden from the American public by Setanta until Mondays airing on VS. Congrats Eagles. We've improved a lot since 2003 and even the two qualifying loses' to Canada last year, of course England have absolutely fallen down an elevator shaft compared to their 2003 team, what a shambles the last 5-6 mins was for them.
I want to congratulate the USA rugby team for playing a great game of rugby, against a pathetic team of mediocre players. England were a joke today, but well done on a great performance. Even if the score board said England won, mentally the USA won, and you should be looking forward to the Somoa game.
I think Ashton could give us a tiny bit more credit. I mean, if England didn't play well then a good part of that must be attributed to the scrappy bravado of the Eagles who didn't let England run all over them. We weren't going to win the match, clearly, but we were nonetheless determined to disrupt the English attack--to such an extent that we actually had some control over the match in the last 7 or so minutes. I'm thrilled with that. England are a classy side; they'll improve.
No offence but England didn't just not play well. they played awfully. There was no momentum, no creativity, and it was just scrappy play. The biggest problem is that there was no urgency in any of the playing and it was just horrendus. An average England side should get at least four tries against the USA, but the USA were great today, and England were perhaps the worst I have seen, and the score line flattered them.
someone on England was lucky to not get a yellow card early in the match from him tripping an American. not sure why it wasn't called. the commentators didn't understand it either.
Yeah, what the hell happened to England? They were so tough not too long ago. I hope Ireland plays at that level. That would be nice for Los Pumas.
Paul Doyle is a good football writer, but he knows nothing about rugby, and I told him as much. Proper rugby writers thought England would win by more (maybe 40-50), but only idiots thought England would put a hundred on the USA.
It was Phil Vickery, the England captain. And he should not have been yellow carded - he should have been sent off. Tripping a player (btw, it was Paul Emerick - the best US back today I thought) is an automatic red card. I think Kaplan just choked, as England would have had a man sent off within the first 10 minutes. He is likely to be cited and will probably miss the match against South Africa at the very least. Anyway, I thought Clever, Emerick, Esikia and Stanfill were brilliant today. Check out our ruck work (clearing out ball in attack, slowing down ball in defense) when this game is replayed. Our ruck work is the equal of England's.
thanks for the claification. i didn't even know how the card system in rugby worked, let alone what was card worthy.
No worries mate. Most rugby people have no clue - probably even the refs sometimes... The card system is quite new. It's only in the last 10 years that we had physical cards at all, and even less (2000) since we had the sin bin for offences that don't warrant a red. I remember back in the day when the ref sent someone off (which was exceptionally rare - you basically had to kill someone to get sent off), he used to just point.
Honestly, great showing by the Eagles. I'm watching the replay right now on Versus. They have added commercials, but not taken out any game action by putting them at logical points, such as after tries. Unfortunately, the announcers are English and therefore have a very pro-England bias in their calling of the action. Here in Ohio, we get a lot of ex-college football players playing for our amateur teams (such as Scioto Valley RFC and Cincinnati Wolfhounds RFC) and if this trend continues, I can see the US becoming a very dangerous 'mid-major' rugby team. We'll never have the talent and success of an All Blacks or England on a regular basis, but I think we could be a very respectable national team in another 10 years.
We could easily have the talent of England. England have pretty consistently sucked for a while. The Martin Johnson led England that won the World Cup was the aberration, not the other way around.