If not us, who should win the Rugby World Cup?

While the tournament meant a week away from their All-Ireland League commitments, Lavelle, an inside centre and soon-to-be graduate in Business and Economics, says that it was far from an early season jolly on the sauce.

Tomorrow, the US play their second Pool B game against Scotland at Elland Road.

A super-power in global affairs, the United States of America is very much a minnow on planet rugby.

“You aim to do better than you did last time and that your programmes are going forward”, was Melville’s summation of the ambitions of the US Eagles in England this month.

And, as everyone remembers, England make their way upfield into a position for Wilkinson to send his drop goal through the posts to win the Webb Ellis Cup in such dramatic fashion.

“It’s not too different to Brazil at the football World Cup“, he notes.

The opener against Fiji was not the cricket score that some more ambitious fans might have been expecting, but England got the job done, and now go into a crunch match against a rival weakened by the loss of some key names. He said “Chum, we haven’t got a trophy”. “If England don’t do well I think the tournament will fall a bit flat on its face”.

“So what we did was plant the seeds for the future, and we’re slowly starting to see the development of that, but we’re not there yet”.

Bracken thinks it will be close – he predicts a 30-20 win for England – but admits that injuries can often help galvanise a team.

“We’ve managed it by introducing kids’ programmes in 2008 that have produced about two millions kids playing a non-contact version of rugby”.

With Siberian Federal and British Columbia on day one, instinct had to take over, and Lavelle says it felt alien standing opposite a side whom they knew literally nothing about.

“Everyone was blown away by the organisation around it. they really pulled out the stops and we were really well looked after”. We will eventually, and we do have them at some levels.

Heyneke Meyer’s side ran in five tries as they returned to form, and got themselves right back in contention to progress to the knockout stages.

And they also came amid mounting excitement at the prospect of Leeds staging a leg of next year’s ITU World Triathlon Series.

Bracken was speaking to JOE at ‘Lads’ Night In’, a joint initiative from online poker site PokerStars and charity Prostate Cancer UK aimed at getting men across the UK to come together for poker games amongst friends and raise awareness of prostate cancer, which will affect one in eight men in the UK in their lifetime. “They’re a very proud team and they take a lot of pride in playing for the Eagles”.