Gloucester, United Kingdom: United States coach Mike Tolkin said emerging rugby nations had taken a big step towards being truly competitive at the next World Cup with their performances this year.
The Eagles lost all four Pool B matches at the 2015 tournament, bowing out with a 28-18 defeat to Japan at Gloucester’s Kingsholm ground on Sunday.
But Tolkin said they and other nations — especially Japan — had shown that they were on the right road to becoming more competitive on the world stage.
“I think it’s certainly a big stepping stone. The margins of victory went down significantly from 2011 to 2015,” he said.
“Obviously some dramatic wins and you didn’t have those massive blowouts of years past. Everyone played tough in every game.
“I think it’s going to be interesting in 2019 with Tier 3 teams moving into that tournament. I think it will be very competitive. “
He said his side had shown their ability in patches to compete with more established rugby nations.
“We were inconsistent in all our games. We showed moments of brilliance, moments of very good play. We had moments of grit but let ourselves down with simple errors and game management at times,” he said.
“We have the tools there; we just need to put them together for a comprehensive period of time.”
Tolkin said the Eagles failed to capitalise on their momentum against Japan.
“It was pretty clear that we made some simple errors early and whenever we scored, we allowed Japan back into it. We muffed up a couple of kick-offs. We had momentum and we let it slip away at critical times,” he said.
