Jordan Gray (left) and Christiane Pheil chase down Kelly Russell. /// Photos: Jackie Finlan
The Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center will come to life tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. Pacific, as U14 through senior club matches precede the USA Women’s National Team (WNT) vs. Canada test at 3 p.m. A bigger hometown crowd will be on hand as the Eagles look to close the gap with its northern neighbor.
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Christiane Pheil, who earned special praise from USA WNT coach Pete Steinberg, acknowledged both the little adjustments that needed to be made for Saturday’s match as well as the grander issues that can only be addressed with time together.
“One of the biggest challenges that the USA team has is that we’re spread out so far across the country that we get so little time to work together,” Pheil said after game one. “As we get tired and the minutes go on, and the communication begins to break down, those execution pieces aren’t happening for us.
“We need more time in this environment, more teachable moments that we can take with us and fix next time,” the flanker reflected. “Just being there in the first half and living through it and feeling the energy in the locker room – I know we’re going to take the second half, but especially take the first half into Saturday and try to keep that top of mind. Remember that even when we’re tired and 60, 70 minutes in, it’s the communication, the little things, that make our system work and make us continue to compete at that level. Second half some of those systems started breaking down, but I have no doubt that with a little more time we’ll be right there and be able to do 80 minutes at that level.”
Canada’s two first-half tries were opportunistic and resulted from turnovers in the USA’s end. The Americans have struggled to score points generally. In the nine tests since the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup, the Eagles averaged 12.7 points/per match. That said, on Tuesday the Eagles scored an immediate, important try between Canada’s two first-half tries, and demonstrated in the first 40 that it had real attacking potential.
“Continue to push, continue to launch on defense, continue to get in their face and bring the physicality that we brought in the first half,” Pheil reviewed the talk into the second half. “If we can keep that physicality high then we can keep staying square on attack. We were finding those gaps and finding space for our insanely fast wings outside. For us it was just fixing the drifting and some of our slow launch.”
As Pheil mentioned, execution began to suffer in the second half, and the scrum never developed into a solid attacking platform.
“The scrums were challenging today. Canada has a strong forward pack,” Pheil said. “For us we got here just a few days ago and just started working on some of our defensive movements. … The overall feeling going on from this game is a little more time together. We’re all coming in from different clubs and playing as individuals a little bit in that scrum. And one thing that makes scrums successful or not successful is working as a unit. The next couple of days will be about, ‘Eight as one,” all working together. It doesn’t matter how strong your eight individuals are, if they’re not working together, it’s not going to be successful. … For us it’s about winning the engage and getting a really clean hook. I think they were able to really mess with us in the front row, which is something we’ll definitely spend some time on.”
Tomorrow’s game will be the Eagles last test before the 2017 Women’s Rugby World Cup in August. Buy your match tickets in advance for $10 (event link) or tune into The Rugby Channel with a paid subscription.
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