The Canadian men’s rugby team began their four-match November tour with a 28-23 defeat to a Greene King IPA Championship XV at Sixways Stadium in Worcester.
Despite having been ahead for large spells of the game – taking an 18-7 lead into the break – the hosts forward power ultimately saw them claim victory on Sunday.
Canada will now recover and ready themselves for games against Namibia, Samoa and Romania in a busy month’s preparation ahead of the Rugby World Cup in 2015.
Kieran Crowley had made ten alterations from their June loss to the USA as injuries and unavailability saw a much-changed side to face the determined English outfit.
The Championship XV, which consisted of players from all but one of the teams in England’s second tier, took a while to settle and when second-row Darren Barry was caught with hands in a ruck, Canada were soon enjoying promising field position.
Canada subsequently applied real pressure in the red zone and following another Championship XV offence, an attacking line-out led to their weak short side being exploited by Prairie Wolf Pack flanker Kyle Gilmour for the opening try of the game.
Unfortunately the experienced full-back James Pritchard couldn’t convert on five minutes and the hosts would soon respond through number eight Mark Bright, who was at the back of a driving maul. Plymouth Albion fly-half Lawrence Rayner slotted the extra points to put the Championship XV 5-7 ahead in an entertaining opening.
Limiting the hosts to such maul platforms would be critical for Canada if they were to keep frequent scorer Bright quiet and they responded in impressive style when tighthead prop Andrew Tiedemann’s work at a ruck forced a penalty. Full-back Pritchard duly sent it over from 30 metres out for an 8-7 lead to the Canadians.
Busy openside flanker Nanyak Dala was the next to pounce at the breakdown and when his turnover led to Championship XV scrum-half Tom Kessell coming offside, Canada moved 11-7 ahead thanks to Pritchard’s second penalty of the match.
Crowley’s men were now enjoying excellent field position and possession in the home 22 as fly-half Pat Parfrey went close after a slick backline move. However, strong defence from the Championship XV kept the Canadians out in that passage.
The pressure was finally rewarded before the half-hour mark though when patient rugby resulted in inside centre Nick Blevins breaking the first line of defence before scrum-half Gordon McRorie stepped and finished well to extend the lead to eleven points with Pritchard’s successful conversion. 18-7 was the half-time scoreline.
Canada’s cushion wouldn’t last long after the break when space was found by the scoring Bristol full-back Jack Tovey, with Rayner’s extra two now making it 18-14.
And the momentum would soon increase in favour of the Championship XV on 47 minutes, with Canada having hooker Ray Barkwill sin-binned for a ruck offence. The hosts now had a chance to further cut the lead due to their numerical advantage.
Bristol blindside flanker Marco Mama did just that a minute later when his fend on tighthead prop Tiedemann saw him race over, pushing the hosts 18-21 in front.
Gaps were beginning to appear at this point and Canada needed to steady the ship, so when the Championship side lost possession before contact, Prairie Wolf Pack scrum-half McRorie duly capitalized, racing over from the halfway line for a much-needed try for Crowley’s men. However, his attempted conversion was amazingly charged down which meant Canada would only have a two-point lead at 23-21.
Unfortunately it wouldn’t be enough to hang on as from a controversial decision, the Championship XV was handed an attacking scrum after scrum-half Jonny Arr was deemed to be short of the line. Replays showed though that he was also in touch, which should have meant Canada were worthy of a five-metre defensive line-out.
It ultimately cost Canada as from that scrum, another replacement, James Phillips, crashed over to push the hosts 23-28 in front which was how the game finished.
Canada Coach Kieran Crowley:
“I thought the first half we played pretty well, but we gave away two quick tries to start the second half and it was an arm wrestle after that and a number of things didn’t go our way,” said Crowley after the game. “It was a disappointing result for us.”
“Ahead of the Namibia game we need to get better at everything we’re doing. We took 14 penalties today, and so did they, and we had a sin bin which didn’t help us; we need to tidy up our discipline,”
“We’ve got to be more accurate for the full 80 minutes. We dropped the kick off at the start of the second half and that put us under pressure and they scored a try. We had chances to put them away but the passes were too high; It’s just the little skills that we need to get better because you can get away without them in competitions back home, but you can’t get away with those mistakes in international rugby,”
“We’ve got some time together now to work on our scrums, lineouts and structures to get prepared for the next three weeks and our three test matches against Namibia, Samoa and Romania,” said Crowley.
Main Photo: Ian Muir/Rugby Canada
