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Originally Posted by NBC
That was irritating. France was beatable today. Scoreline was in no way reflective of the match. I hate late tries especially 2 inside the last few minutes. Always gives the impression of a comfortable win. But at 25-19 it was by no means comfortable.
Conceding 3 late 1st half penalties were always going to be difficult to overturn. Had the match been a bit closer going into the 2nd half - or a Canadian lead - which would not have been undeserved, the final outcome may have been different. Ill-discipline was a real problem today. Too many penalties - 8 in the 1st half. Parra was on fire and not likely to miss many while Pritchard picked a poor time to have an off-game with the boot.
France has a lot of class and talent in their fold, but today, at least for a while, they were beatable. Lots of handling errors and serious problems with the high-ball. We just gave away too many silly penalties in soft positions where their kicker was not going to miss.
Too bad. Could have been an upset for the ages.
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Frankly I didn't think France were beatable in this game. But and it is a BIG but the Canadian side was a whole lot more that gritty. In the past they have been given credit for being gritty and basically it was a statement that they were a hard trying untalented unimaginative poor rugby playing team.
This is a vastly different squad from the teams I have watched for years. Yes they are hard nosed. But they are sound positionally on defense. They have the slide out defense down pat though they are sometimes a little late getting to the outside but still good organization.
On offense no more are they just a bash and smash pack with no imagination. They now utilize the kicking game and their backs much more effectively and they have some genuine good runners at the centers.
I thought they played the French lineup pretty well facet for facet. Two things IMO they still lack and that was the difference. First and it is a big one is depth. Same lineup? With a French team inserting 11 fresh faces. That sounds a whole lot like one team is going to tire before the other and they did. Plus injuries to tired players another factor.
The second is just the lack of game changers. The top clubs all seem to have that winger or that center etc that is a notch above talent. Canada's backs are certainly improving and might be the best group ever but they lack some breakout speed.
Canada was putting the French side under some pressure as they were in turn. But they were able to bring on subs with no dropoff at all. In fact the fresh bodies helped them. Canada had players being carted off the field and the replacements were not as good.
All that said I find this Canadian team very encouraging and on the way up. The placement of at least 5 of the starters on that team in Wales has helped their development. I believe that Welsh coach is also their defensive coach at this World Cup. They seem to have a plan in place for development and a clearer path to the national team(CRC, U19, U20) and they have also started to appear at more IRB seven's tournaments which can't but help their skill development.
Some funding coming their way at the seven's level as well because of the fact they are in the OLY's in 2016 and 2020.
Hopefully they can beat Japan and use their performance here as a springboard to greater ones in the future.