USA coach Pete Steinberg had a simple wish for his team at Women's Rugby World Cup 2017 and that was to improve with every match.
That doesn't mean that the Women's Eagles didn't arrive in Ireland with ambitions of replicating the success enjoyed by the early American teams who reached the first three WRWC finals and were crowned the inaugural champions in 1991.
It was more the fact that their first Pool B match against Italy was the first time the class of 2017 had played together as a team, Steinberg having opted to prepare for Ireland 2017 with training camps rather than warm-up matches.
A 24-12 win over Italy was followed by a more convincing 43-0 defeat of Spain to give USA the maximum 10 points, putting them firmly in the mix for the semi-finals going into their Pool B decider with England on Thursday.
Steinberg is under no illusions about the challenge that defending champions England will pose, but is also excited to see his young side continue to develop and realise the potential he sees in them.
Five steps to glory
“We had seven or eight changes from our last game at the Can-Am and this team that came into the World Cup had never played together so what we have said is we have to grow into the tournament and I think we have done that," explained Steinberg
“I think that we did what we needed to against Italy, we improved in the Spain performance and that is what we have to do if we want to compete with England. We have to continue to grow and improve as a team.
“I think we have a really huge amount of potential. We have some wonderful athletes that haven’t actually played much together and so the more time we get together, the more time we have playing then the better we are going to become as a team.
“We still think we are on the upswing, we hope to play our best game in the fifth game of the tournament and we hope that is the final.
“A lot of people talked about the nine losses in a row that I think we had (coming into the tournament), but every single one of those losses were by the top four teams in the world. So, we have played England a couple of times, we have played France a few times, we played Canada a few times, we played New Zealand a couple of times.
Physicality and accuracy
"We still think we are on the upswing, we hope to play our best game in the fifth game of the tournament and we hope that is the final."
“Those are games we didn’t go into at the time probably ready to play but we knew that we had to get younger after 2014, we knew it was going to be short cycle, so we have a lot of players here who will be available in 2021 and one of the really exciting things about this team is the youth that is here.
“People didn’t look at us as a team that could come in and compete, but I think if you look at our history over the last couple of years we have been able to compete in moments and now against England we have to make that moment 80 minutes.
“We have a lot of respect for England. They play a very similar game to us and obviously they have got a huge amount of experience, most of their squad probably has more caps than our squad in total but we have to match them with the physicality in the forwards and then we have to have accuracy.
“I think one of the things that we need to do a better job of is looking after the ball in contact, when we look after the ball in contact then we are able to play some really good rugby but we have lost that ball a few times and that has been a little disappointing," he added.
“The second thing is we have to put England’s attack under pressure. They have got some wonderful players. I think Katy Mclean is playing the best rugby of probably any fly-half ever for the women and it is great to watch but it is hard to play against. We recognise that we are going to have to deny some of the space that they get and that will probably come from being a little bit physical in the contact.
Rugby pioneers
“I think it is massive (to start well). I think that we have done a really good job of starting our games so far and that has been really important with a team that is young and inexperienced. We want to be able to show in the first 20 minutes that we can compete and once we settle into the game I think we will be able to show some of the things that we can do.”
Nineteen years have passed since USA last reached the semi-finals at a Women's Rugby World Cup and Steinberg admits that ending that sequence will help the sport's continued development back home, but insists that the desire to return the Women's Eagles to the top of the tree is not a weight on their shoulders.
“I think the players here have done a really good job of connecting with the history of USA rugby,” admitted Steinberg.
“The USA women were the pioneers in the international game and before we left the USA in (Washington) DC, USA Rugby honoured the first USA women’s team which was the '87 team and it was great for the current squad to meet those pioneers. The 1991 team won and the 1994 team and 1998 team made the finals, there is a tremendous history there.
“We don’t see that as a burden, we see that as a foundation, as a demonstration of what we can do as the US Women’s Eagles. I think getting back into the semi-finals and demonstrating that the USA women are one of the top teams in the world will be huge for us and huge for the game back home.”