It’s hard to find a USA player who played a better game than Scott LaValla. The Stade Francais openside flanker was in full flight with his skill set, which centers on his defense, his security, and his lineout.

Not a startling runner, LaValla almost never (he’ll bring up one exception soon) put his team in an uncomfortable position. Still, the Eagles lost to the All Blacks. They lost big. Is it futile to look for something to take from that game. The flanker himself didn’t think so.

“There were glimpses today of what we can do,” LaValla told Goff Rugby Report. “The game plan we wanted to execute - there were points when we were doing it. We had a lot of ball, and we wanted to get the ball going forward, but at times we were being a bit one-dimensional. The message at halftime was, ‘you are holding the ball and going forward but there’s space in behind.’”

So the players knew they had failed to capitalize on the so very few try-scoring opportunities that a team like the All Blacks allows. But at least they had created those opportunities.

On defense, where LaValla really shone, “they were few and far between, but there were periods where we put pressure and forced turnovers and knock-ons. There were periods of play where we were quite good. But when you want to play at a high level you have to be consistent, and we weren’t consistent.”

In the end, said the former USA U20 captain, the “exact difference” between the two was that when New Zealand made a mistake, the USA response was just OK, and New Zealand recovered, while when the Eagles made a mistake, the All Blacks response was ruthlessly efficient and overwhelming, and resulted in tries.

LaValla runs the USA lineout, and that was a source of strength. So much so that the strange decisions to run quick lineouts begged justification.

“In the lineout there were two hiccups, which was down to timing,” said LaValla. “It was just a split second off, which is sometimes all you need. Given the time we had together the lineout functioned well. But we didn’t want to do quick lineouts and there was a point where I lost me head and threw it across the field. We knew doing things like that would be playing into their hands, and there were times when we tried to slow the game down and take some wind out of their sails. Other times we needed to do that and didn’t.”

But every conversation post-game in Chicago returned not to the scoreline, but to another number - 61,500, the rough attendance for the game. Or it could be 23, the number of years since the USA had payed New Zealand.

As an experience, said LaValla, “it was special. it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. I got up this morning and just felt really good about today. To get to the field and see the tailgating outside, which is so American, was so great to see. It was an amazing experience. I just wish we could have given fans some more to cheer about.”