The USA Eagles are on fire at the moment. After an epic battle with the Maori All Blacks, then an epic win over Georgia on the road, the team is going from strength to strength. Part of having a great team though is having a great leader. The Eagles certainly have that leadership in the form of Captain Todd Clever. Fresh off their jersey presentation for their test against Russia tomorrow afternoon, Todd was kind enough to sit down and have a chat with me about himself, the team and USA Rugby.

Todd is a native of Palm Springs, California. A quick burst of mental arithmetic points to him growing up in a California that would have been dominated by the Joe Montana lead San Francisco 49ers. Rugby therefore seemed an unusal choice, and not perhaps the first choice Clever would have made. “I followed my older brother into Rugby. He started playing in High School, I was a couple of years younger than him, I’d go to his games but didn’t immediately fall in love with the sport.”

“When he had the opportunity to start travelling with his High School team though, in Canada, the UK and South Africa, it opened me up to a whole new world of opportunities. Experiencing good times, travel, and the culture of rugby, that’s kind of why I got into it.”

Clever has been able to make the most of his travel opportunities, playing in New Zealand, South Africa and Japan at various levels. “When I was at University, I was already capped in the 15’s team. I got my first cap in 2003, and played in the 7’s team. Our 7’s coach at the time was a Kiwi guy named John McKittrick, who was the coach of [New Zealand team] North Harbour 7’s, and a club team. They put together a package that got me down there and so I went for a year, but wanted to stay on so I spent two years down there.” Thanks to the number of expat Kiwi’s playing in the world circuit this link to New Zealand continues, with contacts between Clever and Rico Gear in Japan, and connections with other Kiwi’s in Japan such as Tana Umaga.

New Zealand also gave Todd the opportunity to pursue another of his passions, as a keen surfer he spent time catching a few waves while living in New Zealand. “I was staying at Omaha Beach [on Auckland’s North Shore] while I was living there so I managed to get in the water quite a bit.”

The Lions, a South African Super Rugby franchise, gave Clever the opportunity to further play against some of the best rugby players in the world and further hone his skills. “I was exposed to a lot of Southern Hemisphere rugby, as we had coverage of the Tri Nations and Super Rugby here. Growing up you had these ambitions of who you wanted to play for, in the NFL you’d want to play for the 49ers, in soccer you’d want to play for Manchester United. I wanted to play Super Rugby, and I wanted to play for the [Wellington] Hurricanes. When I was playing for Harbour I had a crack at the Blues squad but wasn’t successful. I had opportunities to play in Europe but I really wanted to notch off that dream of playing Super Rugby. When the South African opportunity came a long it was great to have a chance to play against my friends and realise one of those great goals of a rugby player. It was an honour to play on that stage against some of the greats.”

On the subject of playing against New Zealand we touched on the USA game against the Maori All Blacks, and looked at the amazing performance of the Eagles. “We have a lot of new guys, it’s a pretty young team. I’ve been on the USA team for about ten years now, I’ve seen the cycles and seen this team grow. It helped that we were on home soil, it helped that it was a sell out crowd, the atmosphere was amazing. Then to have the opportunity to play against the silver fern on the black jersey, you couldn’t ask for a better script, a better layout to test our team, test our strength and test our rugby nation.”

“We knew we were going to be up against it, we knew we were massive underdogs, the list goes on. But the guys really came out after it, and I couldn’t be prouder. Just the few mistakes we made kind of lost it for us. But it was a great learning curve and a great confidence boost moving forward.”

Talking about leading his national team out onto a stadium packed with 18,500 screaming fans, Clever commented “There really are no words to describe the feeling. We can play in front of crowds of 2,000, then we can sell out Houston or Philadelphia. That really helps us, the support is great. It was a great feeling, a great vibe, I just gave the boys a couple of words then we went out for it.”

Moving on to the victory against Georgia last weekend, we talked about the game play against a hard and determined Georgia side “We didn’t make it easy for ourselves, letting in a late try. But we knew what we had to do, hang on to the ball, and force the penalty. We knew how we were going to win the game, although we weren’t expecting that hard of a kick. But we got there and we got that lift.”

“We knew what kind of team Georgia was going to be, big and physical. They’re really hard to play against, and we were playing in Georgia, so it was good to get the win. We needed it, to boost ourselves and to give ourselves some notoriety, especially after our performance against the New Zealand Maori. We’ve made a lot of changes and the players are really starting to buy into this team, so to get that win was a huge boost.”

Playing Russia this weekend in England is going to be a whole new challenge, the Eagles have beaten the Russians previously, I asked what the game plan was for this battle. “The game plan is to keep the momentum coming, to know that it’s not going to happen on it’s own. We need to trust our patterns, and match them physically. We believe we can attack them out wide, as long as we earn the right to. We know it’s not going to be an easy game, especially as this is test rugby.”

Playing at the Saracen’s home ground, Allianz Stadium, will be a sort of homecoming for Eagles player Chris Wyles, who is a Saracen when he’s not an Eagle. Discussing this elicits a laugh from Clever “Yeah Chris has his own fan club here, he’s big time in this part of the world.”

Looking towards the future we touched on the Rugby World Cup 2015 “As a Captain, knowing where the team is going to go is hugely important. In a country like the US you’ve always got the four year cycle in the back of your mind, ‘When are the qualifiers, when is the repêchage. It’s always in the back of our minds but in some regards it also takes care of itself.”

After the Russia test, Clever is right back into the action in Japan where he currently plays “My contract is up at the end of this season, maybe it’s time to experience something else. Hopefully I’ll have a couple weeks off to enjoy it.”

I’d like to thank Todd Clever for his generosity and time, especially the night before a test. Keep up to date with what Todd is doing on his Twitter, and also keep up to date with USA Rugby through their website and Twitter. The test kicks off at 3pm UTC, about 10am EST, USA Rugby will be your best source of information on the game, I for one am looking forward to seeing the Eagles fly once again.

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Main Photo Credit: Rugbyworldcup.com