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Pifeleti (29', 37'), Telea-Ilalio (78')
Tries
Gunter (11'), Fakatava (21', 45'), Dearns (25', 61'), Shimokawa (32'), Ishida (69')
Hilsenbeck (30', 38'), Carty (79')
Conversions
Lee (12', 22', 26', 33', 62', 70')
The Japanese Men’s Brave Blossoms defeated the USA Eagles at Heart Health Park 47-21 in Sacramento to top pool B in the Pacific Nations Cup and secured a semifinal against Tonga. Elsewhere Fiji topped their pool and will play Canada in the other semifinal next weekend in Denver, Colorado, with both Tonga and Canada securing Australia RWC 2027 qualification.
For the USA, and Samoa, it means they will compete in the 5th place playoff with the winner securing the final direct qualification spot while the loser has a more arduous route.
Jason Damm who captained the Eagles for the first time, said “It’s another step forward for us,” he told Rugbypass TV. “Obviously, it’s not the result we wanted but it’s a step ahead of the performance against Canada, so we’ll keep building on that energy and that work.”
Japan’s win means they have now beaten the USA in nine of their last ten meetings and they had three try scorers at Health Field who also crossed the whitewash to dot down against Canada last weekend. The loss at home means the US have not won their past four home tests.
Eddie Jones’s Japan played the game at a pace and power the Eagles could not handle and the Brave Blossoms were leading 28-14 by the break having already scored four tries to secure a bonus point. The set piece was also dominated by Japan and the USA only had their first points after the half an hour mark.
Jones said via the JRFU “I really liked the way we played tough in the second half. We got out to a good lead in the first half then got a bit sloppy. But in the second half we played some good tough rugby against the wind so that will stand us in good stead for the Semi Final against Tonga.
Tonga is a big physical team who will come through the front door, so we’ve got to be able to stop that. We’ve got to be able to take away their go-forward and so that last little bit in the second half today was really good for us.”
For the Brave Blossoms, the try scorers were, Kanji Shimokawa, Kippei Ishida, Warner Dearns (2), Amato Fakatava (2) and Ben Gunter - the latter four scored last week and Fakatava now has four in two games.
Seungsin Lee was again excellent off the boot (he was the top scorer in the PNC 2024 too. The JRFU said he “controlled the Brave Blossom’s backline superbly, defending well and kicking six of his seven conversions.
For the hosts, Kapeli Pifeleti (2), and Payton Telea scored but they also had a yellow card handed out to Christian Poidevin.
USA Head Coach Scott Lawrence commented, “This is a work in progress in terms of building the robustness we need to compete in the way we want to compete.
We generally did well for longer periods of time in this game, in terms of executing our plan for more minutes with the ball in play. We just ran into a good team who punished us in the minutes we didn’t have the ball. Going into next week, we’ll look to increase those minutes for ourselves.”
Brave Blossoms captain Warner Dearns, who has two wins under his belt while in charge - in addition to three tries in the past two tests - said “Our first 20 minutes we defended really well and got a lot of momentum. We want to keep that going on into the next games.
To win the next two games, we need our forwards to front up and have a really good game – I think we showed in the last two games we played against Canada and the US, we did a good job.”
