O'Sullivan's USA book World Cup place
Sunday, 22 November 2009 13:49The United States booked a place at Rugby World Cup 2011 with a 27-6 second-leg victory over Uruguay in Florida.
Eddie O'Sullivan's USA Eagles completed a 54-28 aggregate victory over the South Americans to secure their berth in Pool C in New Zealand, where they will meet Australia, the head coach's former charges Ireland, Italy, and another European qualifier.
Two tries from captain Todd Clever, another from fellow flanker Louis Stanfill and one more from wing Kevin Swiryn did the damage for the Eagles at Central Broward Regional Park in Fort Lauderdale and Irishman O'Sullivan saw plenty of improvement from the side which had scored a narrow 27-22 win in Montevideo a week before.
O'Sullivan said: 'I was very happy with our defence, it went very well today.'
'We scrummaged better and stopped their rolling maul, which were the two parts of the game that we needed to improve from last week.
'I feel happy with the way we finished. Uruguay made us work for it and it should be interesting to see how they fare in repechage.'
O'Sullivan paid tribute to his players given the lack of preparation they had had in the build-up to the two-legged play-off.
'It's tough to hit the ground running after not being together since July, and although we qualified, which was our ultimate goal - they were a little rusty early on.
'I can't be too hard on them, though, they got the job done and you can't forget that we scored eight tries in the last two games against Uruguay.'
