The USA recorded a record win this weekend against the lone remaining West Indies representatives in the Rugby World Cup. Barbados, despite a magnificent effort by their coaching and backroom staff, had no answer to a better US team, proving once again how far WI rugby has to go if we are to be taken seeriously as a region.


However, there is a good deal to be gained from this experience. Full credit should be given to Joe Whipple and the Barbados RFU for the professional manner in which they approached this tournament, despite woefully inadequate financial support.
I'm sure they have learnt a lot from their journey and will, I'm sure share the knowledge with the rest of us.


Congratulations to Barbados from all at Bahamas Rugby.




Here's the article published by Scrum.com (written by Brian Lowe)


Eagles record win - reaction from players and coaches


The US Eagles have set the scene for a head-on clash with Canada in next month’s crucial RWC Americas zone qualifier with their record breaking belting of Barbados.


The 91-0 scoreline was the highest score posted by an American team in Eagle history and doubled as the USA’s biggest winning margin ever, while Mike Hercus tied the USA’s single game scoring record. Hercus kicked all thirteen conversions Saturday to tally 26 points, a mark set by Chris O’Brien against Uruguay in 1989 when he scored three tries and booted seven conversions (tries were still worth four points).

“Yeah, I’m happy with that,” Hercus told American Rugby News. “I’ve been working hard on my kicking and obviously coming back from my groin injury, it’s been hard to practice.” As for the record score, Hercus says it definitely means something special to the players. “Absolutely. You can say you’ve been a part of that for the rest of your life. It by no means was a flawless affair, but it’s not every day the US wins by 91 so we’re happy with that.”

Follow up:

The big win means that even if the US and Canada tie in Newfoundland on August 12, the US would be in a good position to advance to the Rugby World Cup as the Americas #2 seed going into Pool B along with Australia, Wales, Fiji and an Asian side. “It gives us two options against Canada now, we can either beat them or draw with them, which is nice to have up your sleeve and some of those games get quite tight,” US interim head coach Peter Thorburn told ARN.

“It was a good result but we’re not going to get carried away with it.
“I don’t like singling guys out, but Phillip Eloff runs very, very good lines and he’s an aggressive runner, he carries the ball nicely. He’s a threat and what he’ll do for us is take pressure off other players and give them the opportunity to perhaps show their wares a bit better. We’ve got to now make sure that we get possession and we get our forwards working and winning our lineouts and getting good scrum platform and then good phase ball. And we’ve got a backline that’ll be hard to hold.”

One of the Eagles’ standouts was Paul Emerick who slotted in at fullback against the Bajans and he thought a good week of preparation leading up to the game did the trick,

“We’re starting to get gelling as a team and I think it showed,” he told ARN. “Barbados isn’t the strongest team, but I thought at times we were pretty clinical. We’re going to get to work on our fitness and we’re going to give Canada a run and just get it done with, get qualified, that’s the way I’d like it.”

From a Barbados perspective, they never gave up and were able to string together some decent phases from time to time. Flanker Jamie Vernon, skipper and eightman Steven Stewart and scrumhalf Mike Rees all tried hard for their country.

“We put some hits in but we just lost all our shape and fair on the US they came out and played with a lot of intensity and we just had trouble dealing with that,”

Barbados head coach Joe Whipple told ARN.

“I thought they ran some good lines, but we didn’t play very good defense. We didn’t execute the drift very well and we didn’t play the defense that we really wanted to play, so I think the Canadians you’ll see them do that and I think also they’ll get on them a little bit in the scrums. I would say the Americans are going to have to do a little bit of work in the pack.”