THE USA team get fed up every World Cup when they are described as the sleeping giants of the game. It is a label they have been wearing for a couple of decades or more and still there are only hints that they might be about to waken.

They know all about what Japan did to South Africa – even though they missed it live with a team training session taking precedence – and the effect that has had. Can they do the same? Especially against a Scotland side feeling the effects of a bruising midweek game? They think so, but they also know lightning rarely strikes twice quite that quickly.

“Scotland having four days’ rest is a false sense of security, it takes away from the focus that we have to work damn hard to win any World Cup game,” said Mike Tolkin, the head coach. “Everyone has a plan for the short turnaround. They’re solid as a unit and a squad and those guys will slide right in and be right on song.

“I don’t think there is a person in the world who is not going to feel the effects of it late in the game, so they’ll battle around it. For us we want to keep taking it to them and keep the tempo and the physicality up.

“We know they want to get out to a fast start; they wouldn’t want the game to drag on into the late stages and to have to slug it out for 80 minutes. I would expect a high octane pace from them.

“We’re not in there to keep up with anyone, we would like to set the tempo. We would like to dictate some of the pressure.”

Which suggests that they are unlikely to try to raise the speed of the game to try to tire the Scots out – they are more likely to use their big forwards to hammer their opponents into submission.

The one thing that has changed for rugby in the USA in the last two years has been the introduction of rugby sevens to the Olympics. When that decision was made, it opened all sorts of funding streams that had been denied to them in the past and suddenly there were opportunities for American players to make the grade without having to travel abroad to do it.

It has paid dividends for the sevens team, who have won their first World Series title, but has yet to be translated into the XVs game to any large extent, and probably won’t, suggests Nathan Hines, the former Scotland lock who is now part of the Scots’ coaching panel, until they can get more access to their players.

“While the lower ranked teams are getting better, the problem is that they are having to run twice as fast to catch up and have to get better twice as quickly because the top teams have got a better structure in place,” he said.

“Countries like Japan have all their players in one place but in America they are all over the place. I think that means that the first game or two in the tournament are the ones that are most likely to see big upsets.

“They’ve been buoyed by Japan beating South Africa, it has given every team that is lower down in the rankings a boost. You can spend a lot of time together and not get any better but the USA are like Japan in that they’ve been playing a lot of games, so that already helped them get better and then they get to bring back guys from the Premiership or wherever.”

For all that, they feel they can take inspiration from Japan. It may be rare, but lightning does sometimes strike twice.

Shalom Suniula, the scrum-half, said: “Every player, especially from the tier two nations, gained confidence from that game. They threw a grenade in our pool so we take confidence from that. It’s gone viral, and for the [USA] team it’s been inspirational.”