Eagle Watch: Gary Gold Ponders Depth For Fall

Eagle Watch: Gary Gold Ponders Depth For Fall

Gary Gold has been moving around, and maybe he needs to sit still for a bit.

Aug 13, 2018 by Alex Goff
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Gary Gold has been moving around, and maybe he needs to sit still for a bit.

The USA Men’s 15s national team coach is still hustling between Cape Town, South Africa, and the USA. He has been in the States to work, but also attended a memorial service for his wife’s sister, who sadly passed away, and then it was the demands of rugby again, including a trip to the Rugby World Cup 7s. The trip back from that tournament took him from San Francisco to New York to Dubai and then Cape Town. 

It’s not easy, but Gold can at least can sit back in that airline seat and ponder that his team is 8-0 this season. That has to help ease the travel lag a little bit.

Up ahead in the fall will be a stern test for the USA, with the Maori All Blacks, Ireland, and, if reports are correct, Romania and Samoa on the slate. Can the Eagles meet that challenge? Certainly, and Gold points less to the historic win over Scotland and more to the victory a week later over Canada.

“Post-Scotland, we had such a real opportunity to slip on a banana skin,” said Gold. “Canada away is a tough place to play, particularly where we were in Halifax. It was a very big challenge. We were very aware of how big the threat was against Canada, a team that is still fighting for a World Cup place.”

Gold said he was very happy with how his team handled the game, didn’t get impatient, and eventually blew the Canadians away. In describing the game, Gold used a cricket term. 

“We built an innings,” which is what’s said when a batsman starts scoring slowly, but after time gets his timing right and starts to score more frequently. This is how the Eagles beat Canada, too.

“I was very, very satisfied to win in that manner and just round off the objectives of what we wanted to achieve in the summer,” added Gold. 

The Eagles did this without try-scoring sensation Joe Taufete’e, and in his place, Gold started Dylan Fawsitt and used him much the same way he used Taufete’e. Fawsitt didn’t score tries, but he ran the ball well, and, more important, executed at set piece.

The Moment When The USA Team Won


“Dylan’s a good footballer,” said Gold. “He runs well and basically a refurbished openside flanker, He’s one of the finer guys on the team. But Dylan’s Achilles heel has been set piece.”

Against Brazil, Fawsitt struggled in the scrum. His throwing has been inconsistent. But after some work, Fawsitt put together a good performance. This all when he wasn’t named in the original squad and was brought in hen James Hilterbrand was injured.

“It’s lovely to see when you work on a guy’s weaknesses and see him improve,” said the coach.

Depth is a critical part of the future for Gold, and he points out that he has to give time for players even as he settles on a group for the 2019 World Cup. He says repeatedly that he is still looking for players, but any casual observer can see that a few players are close to being locked in.

At the same time, while Gold wants consistency, he wants depth, and that means finding playing opportunities for many players.

“I have seen so many teams that rely on older players and those players get too old and you just can’t let go,” said Gold. “I saw that in South Africa. If you have the philosophy of ‘if you’re old enough, you’re good enough,’ you’re going to be able to get younger players properly cooked. The great example of that is while Kevin Meelamu [of New Zealand] was acquiring his 108 test caps, Andrew Horne got 83. And they’re seven years apart. The point is, that program allowed Kevin Meelamu to be the #1 hooker, but intermittently Hore was coming off the bench or when New Zealand wasn’t playing the toughest competition Andrew was starting.”

It requires to some depth to develop depth, but Gold said he is “particularly keen” on driving that. He will not change much in the squad for the November test matches — except for one thing — and he likes the group he has.

That one thing is that he won’t have the overseas pros for the Maori game. That’s a challenge for Gold, but it’s a worthy tradeoff because he will have the pros available for the rest of the tour.

“The Maori team is basically going to be every person who is not n the All Black squad and has any Maori blood — it will be a very high-quality team,” said Gold. “It’s going to be a massive challenge. And overall it’s going to be four grueling weeks.”

At 8-0, the Eagles can look at those eight games and acknowledge that really only three games were really tough, and six of the eight were in the USA. Playing tougher games on the road will be the next step up, and a challenge the USA needs.

“There’s a couple of areas where we have to be hard on ourselves, but we’re not looking to change too much,” said Gold. “Right now we just want to make sure that we’re better each time we step on the pitch.”