‘Shout out to the girls’: US exit Rugby World Cup but young stars stoke hope for future | USA women’s rugby union team

TThe American Eagles left the World Cup on Saturday after beating the Samoa 60-0 in York, but seeing Australia maintain England at 47-7 in Brighton, enough for the Wallaroos to reach the quarter-finals on the points differential.

Kate Zackary’s team will be disappointed to miss a last position with Canada, knowing that they could have made it disappear differently.

In the first game, in front of nearly 43,000 fans in Sunderland during a historic evening for women’s rugby, England could have been held under 69-7. In the second and third games, a better goal would have helped. But for five missed conversions, the Samoa would have been beaten 70-0. It turned out that it would still not have been sufficient, but the missed kicks also cost victory in the United States against Australia in the second round, an equality of 31-31 which will be as classic of the World Cup, but also a missed chance for a historic American victory.

After the Samoa game, Zackary, the United States captain, said: “We put all our hearts at stake and that’s all I can ask. So wherever the chips fall, they will fall as they will, and we will simply pick up the pieces.”

It was true that the Eagles put everything online – their own line, in the case of Zackary, the Flanker of Ealing Trailfinders by carrying out a beautiful tackle to refuse Samoa what would have been an extremely popular and completely deserved first test, first of all of the tournament.

Eagles coach Sione Fukofuka said after the Samoa match: “We get up and fall as a team, so we’re going to look [England v Australia] Together, and obviously, for the first time, I think, encouraging the English team and hoping for the best. »»

The best did not materialize, but the post-tournament examination of Fukofuka should include brilliant words for a certain number of young players who should be there for the next World Cup in Australia in four years.

Freda Tafuna is the leader, a phenomenally rhythmic and powerful flanker not only 22 years old but who is still a student, in Lindenwood in Missouri. Play -play -play of the year two consecutive years, she now has six World Cup trials – two against Australia, four against the Samoa – and two prizes of the match player.

“All glory to God,” said Tafuna on Saturday. “Cry to girls, family and friends at home, and thank you to the crowd. You are the best. “

Before the match, The Guardian spoke to Erica Jarrell -Searcy, the dynamic Eagles Lock who ended up scoring a trial in each World Cup match – an amazing 40 -meter sprint against England, a short -range plunge against Australia, a 20m run -in against Samoa – to emerge as a star of the tournament.

“Freda is a mutant,” said Jarrell-Searcy, to reach a term of praise as possible among rugby attackers everywhere. “Oh, she’s so cool.”

After graduating, it would probably seem that Tafuna will follow Jarrell-Searcy in England, where the lock is playing for the sale of sharks. She does not have a long Harvard – like the half case of Cass Bargell, another to shine in England – Jarrell -Searcy considers college as a future source of force.

“The university match is among the best sustained rugby that you can play as a young American athlete,” she said. “I don’t think you can exaggerate the role of the university game as a feeder for American rugby at the moment, then with female elite rugby [the new semi-professional domestic league] Hopefully the root is developing.

“I think that the future of this group, and the next cycle in particular, is very brilliant. Looking at Harvard every weekend, I would never have played in the team they have now. The girls they can recruit, during their first day of college, they are better than some senior players now. I mean, look at Sariah Ibarra. ”

From southern California, partly shaped in New Zealand, the great-back in fact bypassed the university match to sign a contract with USA Sevens, to hunt Olympic gold.

“She is 19 years old, tearing her apart,” said Jarrell-Searcy, of Ibarra’s excursion in 15. “The second we saw in the camp, we knew that she was special, and she is part of a generation that is all special. So yes, it will be a really cool couple.”

It will be less cool for the Eagles, because they prepare and prepare to go home. But there was a complete consolation immediately after the match on Saturday, while the Americans and the Samoans met on the field to kiss, laugh, dance and sing – a hymn, led by the Samoans, addressed at gratitude to a grateful crowd.

Such expressions of pure joy in rugby and its traditions were an important part of this World Cup, the adversaries showing the pleasure of each other, in the challenges posed and encountered, in a hard game in front of unprecedented crowds and the attention of the media for a game built on respect and support.

“Joy was a great theme for us,” said Jarrell -Searcy, of a team of Eagles containing Ilona Maher, the exuberant social media superstar including the creed – “Beast, Beauty, Brains” – was fully exposed.

Jarrell-Searcy continued: “Charles Dudley, our strength and packaging coach, he has this graph where he is a bit for him to tell us how no week is going to be zero. We arrived this week, it was the top of the peak on the graph.

“We are, like, diving into this red zone where you could start taking small injuries, because we work so hard. We know it, and we are prepared for that, but … I think we were also a bit like synchronized in our menstrual cycles in a way that was not useful to be also at the top of the peak.

“So there are tears and frustration, and just like absolute pits. And I sat with Mel Bosman, our attacker’s coach, at breakfast, and I stopped this photo … When we were at a captain race by doing a tiktok with Lo [Maher] And the photographers were there, and they took a photo of us, like, huddling around Lo’s phone. And we are tight, and we look and we smile, just trying to understand how to make this tiktok well.

“And I said to myself:” Imagine that this group was not on the point, you know, an idiotic tiktok and without consequences. Imagine if it was a group of high performances, and we focus on, you know, an abandoned bullet, a game that has not turned bad, and we are going to do things well, and we are delighted to do it well, we are not frustrated with the evil.

“And Mel was like” it’s so important. ” You know, of course his experience with the [New Zealand] Black Ferns, she knows this fraternity and how motivating it can be to express themselves and not necessarily try constantly to avoid failure, but to seek success. And we have brought joy since then.

“Our training in weekend units was, whoever did not enter, because we have injuries here and there, dragging a loudspeaker from top to bottom, whatever the disruptive music that they can, as, absolutely music not to be tackled.

“So yes, joy, and above all female joy, I think it’s a non -zero part of this World Cup – as anhlete and as a fan.”