American Pacific Challenge
Oct 6th -14th
The Americas Pacific Challenge is a great tournament to play potential prospect for their national teams. The USA's potential national team players are called the USA Selects. This year's tournament sees reigning champions Argentina XV compete alongside Canada A, Samoa A, Tonga A, Uruguay A and USA Selects. The is the 3rd tournament of these nations. I always want to know how the USA "stacks" up against other nations. The first year the USA placed 5th, last year they placed 2nd. This seems like great improvement but beware of this record....
This brief 3 game competition it is who you play as opposed to your record. Last year the USA Selects didn't have to play the powerful Argentina Side. They beat Canada and Uruguay. They came away with a 2-1 record however Samoa placed 4th and was clearly the better team. You see Samoa pounded the USA 48-26 last year.
This year USA Selects will play all the teams in Group A. Argentina XV just missed beating the full USA national team this year in the Americas Championship and the game was home for the USA team. Now your B team has to travel to South America and play this same team looking for payback. I am hoping the USA Selects can close the talent difference with Argentina.
If the USA Select can finally start beating the Pacific nations then the gap will be closing. This year the USA Selects get a crack at Tonga A them on Oct 6th. This game is where we see if the talent and technical gap has been closed. The next game is against Uruguay XV Oct 10. Uruguay are trying to close the gap on USA and this is the game for them to show improvement in front of their home fans. This has been the easiest game for the USA. The last game is Oct 14th against the top team in the tournament Argentina XV.
Group A
Argentina XV
Tonga A
Uruguay A
Group B
Somoa A
USA Selects
Canada A
I am looking forward to this tournament because the USA is on a huge upward movement in Rugby. Their USA U-20 team lost in the qualifiers to Canada and missed out on the World Rugby U-20 Trophy in Romania this year. This was hugely unfortunate for the development of USA Rugby. I love tournaments especially one where i can track my national team. The USA "potential" stars were not able to play or develop their young stars in the U-20 Trophy this year.
There are only 3 yearly tournaments to see the USA develop their nation Rugby team. The Americas Championship which the beginning of each year and runs 6 weeks, The U-20 Trophy and this The Americas Pacific Challenge.
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