The Worcester hooker is a try-scoring threat in an Eagles squad full of seasoned pros and determined to mount a challenge in Japan

In preparation for USA’s World Cup opener against England in Kobe on Thursday, head coach Gary Gold has worked his players hard. In the heat and altitude of Colorado, in the humidity of Okinawa, the pace has been so high that Joe Taufete’e, the biggest hooker in world rugby, has ended up a little less big.

“When I got into camp in July,” he says, down the phone, “I had put on a little weight. I was almost 130kg. Now I’m sitting at 120 so you can see the amount of work we’ve put in. It’s been horrendously tough.”

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He’s not exaggerating. One morning in Colorado, he says, “We did this notorious climb, the Incline.”

He can’t remember the number of steps up the side of a mountain in Manitou Springs – it’s 2,744 – because he was “too busy trying to find my breath. My soul got tested out there. It was more than 1k in uphill steps and after that we went on with this captain from the US military. You know how they carry big luggages in the army, about 30lbs? We went on like a 6k walk with that, and he kept the pace.

“It was just horrendous, with the altitude as well. That’s not what our bodies are used to.”

Gold’s point was that his men’s bodies are not used to the rigors of regular Tests against genuine World Cup contenders. In Japan, they play three in a row.

The Eagles are all pros now, thanks to overseas clubs, the sevens circuit and the advent of Major League Rugby. They have a firm hold on Canada and they have risen to No13 in the world via historic results including a win over Scotland last year. But this will be different. France and Argentina follow England before Tonga offer perhaps the only realistic chance of a win.

We know it’s going to take a lot of endurance to keep up with these guys but we’re going to have something for them

Taufete’e insists the Eagles aim to win every game they play but concedes that “looking at how England have been going, it’s not going to be an easy battle. But we fully trust in what Gary does and we believe he’s found a way into their DNA, and a way to try to exploit that. We know it’s going to take a lot of endurance to keep up with these guys but I know we’re going to have something for them.”

Gold has extensive Premiership experience. So does Taufete’e, who has been at Worcester since 2016. He speaks glowingly of the set-up at Sixways, of living in Cheltenham, of wanting to stay in England for a while to come.

He has described elsewhere how his wife, Noeleen, was responsible for his discovery of rugby. Taufete’e was born in American Samoa and raised in the San Francisco Bay area and was a defensive tackle in college football. Injury wrecked his NFL dreams but Noeleen’s family were stalwarts of Belmont Shore, one of the strongest rugby clubs in California and indeed the whole US. Partly in hope of impressing his date, Taufete’e picked up the other odd-shaped ball. It worked out.

What’s less known is the impact on Taufete’e of a season in New Zealand, an experience which propelled him towards making a living from rugby and now, still just 26, going to a second World Cup.

“It was through Belmont Shore, our president-slash-CEO. I don’t really know what his position is. Doug Pye. He’s just the guy who runs the club, you know? He had connections in Otorohanga, in Waikato, he had family there, and so after a promising year I had, the club asked if I wanted to go overseas and expand my horizons through rugby.

“When I got there, you literally walk one mile from the entrance to the exit and that’s the whole town of Otorohanga. But they were just lovely people and I couldn’t believe I was there. I had family in New Zealand, in the Northland, so I was able to see them from time to time too.”

When I came back from New Zealand, I saw the game differently … I saw the field as a Kiwi would

Taufete’e spent six months amid the flying backs and fierce rucks of Kiwi club rugby, learning the game anew, “playing with some of the guys that played for the Blues, you know, and who played for Waikato”. It all helped him become a mobile mountain of a hooker who has also won caps at prop.

“I kid you not,” he says, “when I came back from New Zealand, I saw the game differently. I think that was the year that I really took off … everything just opened up. I saw the field better, I saw the field as a Kiwi would.”

If Otorohanga was a finishing school, it was old school. Taufete’e worked his passage “at a timber company that was owned by the owner of the club, and I stayed with him too. He was a great man, Graham Wilshier was his name, and he also took in a guy from Argentina way back who’s never left the side. He’s kinda become his other son. You can see the hospitality he brings. It was just a lovely time.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Taufete’e celebrates after scoring his side’s first try against Ireland in Dublin last year. Photograph: Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images

“[The Maori All Blacks centre] Jackson Willison, he played at Worcester with me. It was surreal to meet up with him there, knowing that I looked up to him when I was playing for Otorohanga and he was up in Super Rugby, coming back to the club for game time. When he showed up, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, the man plays for the Blues and he’s next to me, playing.’ It was amazing.”

Taufete’e says he had similar thoughts when he was first an Eagle, called up for the 2015 World Cup, training and playing with the likes of Samu Manoa. Just four years later he’s the hooker with the most tries in Test rugby, having passed the great Keith Wood with a hat-trick against Uruguay in March. Less-experienced Eagles, even hard-bitten pros like the Irish-born New York hooker Dylan “The Butcher” Fawsitt, now look up to him.

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He’s too modest to actually say that – he details a strong relationship with Fawsitt, his backup – but he undeniably has a lot to teach, off the field as well as on.

The timber yards of Waikato were not his only other employer. In 2016, Taufete’e signed with the San Diego Breakers of PRO Rugby, the predecessor of MLR. But, he says, “with the struggles it had as a new company and league, it wasn’t stable enough for me to pursue it full-time. So I was working security with a hotel and driving to San Diego as often as I could.”

MLR and sevens do not pay big bucks either. Many in Gold’s squad must make ends meet. As Taufete’e focuses on the challenge in Japan, he sees his own past toils as a positive. After all, the hotel job was a step up on what he’d done before, in a whole other school of hard knocks.

“I mean, it was safe,” he says, laughing. “I used to bounce a lot in LA and Orange County. That nightlife was too much even for me.”