Gold slams pitch size as US Eagles attempt to qualify for RWC

USA Eagles head coach Gary Gold has blasted organisers for allowing the first leg of their 2023 Rugby World Cup qualifier with Chile to be played on the smallest test pitch he has ever experienced with the match halted for 20 minutes for a power failure as torrential rain turned the surface into a quagmire.

Gold’s team emerged with a slender 22-21 win to take into Saturday’s second leg at Infinity Park in Denver which will be played on a “normal” sized pitch with the winner earning the right to join England, Argentina, Samoa and Japan in Pool D in France next year.

The experienced head coach told RugbyPass: “The whole trip to Santiago was extraordinarily difficult and there is not an unbelievable amount of support from the top of the game for fixtures of this magnitude. It is massive for us trying to qualify and the pitch in Chile was approved at just 94m and 63m wide and I don’t know how that is possible."

According to World Rugby regulations, a pitch must be a minimum of 94 metres in length and 68 metres wide. In the case of international matches, any variations to these dimensions must be approved by World Rugby beforehand.

“I have never been involved in a match which had a floodlight failure and you could not make it up and it was a concern because we feared the game would be abandoned. We were cool, calm and collected in adversity and while we didn’t play our best rugby it is now all to play for in Denver.

“The conditions were difficult and Chile deserve respect. When you have a guy like Craig White as head of your strength and conditioning you know it will be tough. We hadn’t assembled since October last year and I was very proud of how the boys dealt with all the circumstances on a freak night when a city that gets 10 inches of rain a year seemed to get that during the game.”

Gold is backing AJ MacGinty to ensure the USA Eagles qualify for the 2023 Rugby World Cup to after the Bristol Bears outside half helped give his country that slender lead. MacGinty, who has left Sale Sharks to join Bristol, returned to test action in Santiago last weekend to kick two conversions and a penalty.

With the USA having been awarded the 2031 men’s Rugby World Cup and also the 2033 women’s tournament, it is vital for the sport’s profile at home to be involved in France next year.

Gold said: “We want to get the job done and qualify and having AJ MacGinty fit is really important and after his injury at the end of the season with Sale it was great to give him game time. His experience is going to be vital and we need to be able to start preparing for next year’s World Cup and it would be an unbelievably important achievement to accomplish.

“Until we qualify for France we cannot plan anything moving forward because the loser goes into the Cup repechage.”

The loser in Glendale will enter the Final Qualification Tournament in November, alongside Kenya, Portugal and the Asia/Pacific play-off loser.