a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Z0GMBaSoOOM/TA-O8EN0y7I/AAAAAAAAEOc/Gn3lohnC8DE/s1600/churchill-cup-usa-russia.jpg"img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 350px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Z0GMBaSoOOM/TA-O8EN0y7I/AAAAAAAAEOc/Gn3lohnC8DE/s400/churchill-cup-usa-russia.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480756434108206002" border="0" //aspan style="font-weight: bold;"Amongst the internationals taking place around the world at the moment, the Churchill Cup got under way in Denver, Colorado this past weekend with Canada beating Uruguay, and the USA overcoming Russia 39-22 in this featured match. /spanbr /br /The Russians looked the stronger side in the first half, but the USA got things going in the second as they stretched the lead after the scores had changed hands numerous times throughout the game.br /br /Coached by former Ireland coach Eddie O’Sullivan, the USA team is steadily building in stature and featured Saracens back Chris Wyles, and Biarritz winger Zee Ngwenya. Both crossed for tries as their side strung together some impressive pieces of play.br /br /"We struggled with the pace of the game early out," said O'Sullivan. "Having not played for over six months, it was expected we'd be a bit rusty. We were happy with the win, but it's clear we still have a lot of work going forward.br /br /"We had a proper patch in the second half, I think a lot of our guys dug deep and our replacements were fast off the bench. They all worked hard for this result."br /br /Despite coming off second best, the Russians were equally impressive with their home grown talent and physical approach to the game, and are definitely going to be an interesting side to keep an eye on at next years World Cup, where the two sides will meet in their opening games.br /br /It was an enjoyable match and the standard of play was good to see. Russia face the England Saxons next, today, followed by France A against Uruguay. The USA Eagles will play England next on Sunday.br /br /centerobject height="288" width="400"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/YpVrw3ZDppgamp;hl=en_GBamp;fs=1amp;rel=0"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/YpVrw3ZDppgamp;hl=en_GBamp;fs=1amp;rel=0amp;showinfo=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="288" width="400"/embed/object/centerbr /span style="font-size:85%;"span style="font-weight: bold;"Time: /span05:33/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"http://www.rugbydump.comimg width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/32316390-6683292657252266835?l=rugbydump.blogspot.com' alt='' //divdiv class="feedflare"a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rugbydump?a=nC6t8Dm4SVg:b1vGuHphq3I:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rugbydump?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rugbydump/~4/nC6t8Dm4SVg" height="1" width="1"/ More...