USA Needs More Games

from Goff (subscription required)

December 21, 2007 – The USA women’s national team returned from their tour of the UK with three losses and no victories: 24-0 against the Nomads, 34-17 against England A, and 34-0 against England.

“All those games were winnable,” said USA captain Kristin Zdanczewicz, one of the very few experienced players on tour, and who cruelly missed the final game with an ACL tear. “Every game we were in a position to win, but we had a very steep learning curve for a lot of players.”

So they did. Key among the issues, especially in their last game against England, was winning their own scrum ball, and getting kicks to touch. Neither happened with anything like regularity.

Kicking remains an issue in the women’s game in the USA simply because a lot of players don’t practice it under pressure. Pressure can come in many forms – a defender running hard at you, or just a few thousand people staring at you as you prepare to punt the ball.

“It would go a long way to have both of those aspects [scrums and kicking] in our game,” said USA coach Kathy Flores. “With the squad selected, we had few adequate kickers, and, truthfully, kicking is not something that players in this country concentrate on. And the scrums – yes it would have been nice to count on our own possession to attack with.”

Fixes are there. Flores said players will worked harder on their kicking because they can’t be caught unable to boot a cold, hard ball on a chilly, windy day again. And the scrums? Well it’s the same issues the USA men faced, issues of unity, power and understanding.

“We have major work to do on our tight five and they know it,” said Flores ominously. “They didn’t like running backwards. The major issue is not having the time and money to work together. The schedule for players is getting incredibly hectic with all the choices of rugby to play and it becoming an increasing burden monetarily. However, it doesn’t deny the fact that we need to have position-specific camps in order to train the way we need to play internationally.”

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