Canadians squeak into semis with late rally
RIO DE JANEIRO— Even before the final conversion attempt, the Canadians knew they had won and were heading to the Olympic semifinals, but there was a pause before they started celebrating.
Captain Jen Kish and Ghislaine Landry looked at each other, hands on their heads, and smiled. There was happiness in that look — and relief.
They know just how close they came to losing their chance to make it to the semifinals and, they hope, go on to make Canadian history by winning a medal in the Olympic debut of rugby sevens.
They came here a top-three ranked team but for much of Sunday they didn’t look it.
Their 15-5 win over France was a dramatic comeback from their bruising 22-0 loss to Britain earlier in the day but it was still far from their top game.
France scored in the opening minutes and the Canadians seemed to be just a step off their best game, again. Then, in the closing minutes of the first half Kayla Moleschi burst from a pack midfield and sprinted to the end to tie things up.
“When she scored, I said, ‘OK, we’ve got ourselves a game now,’ ” Kish said. “We’ve got this.” She was right. Canada plays Australia — the top ranked women’s team here — in the semifinals Monday (1:30 p.m., TSN) while Britain plays New Zealand, with the winners moving on to the evening gold-medal round (4:30 p.m., TSN).
“That first score can sometimes turn into two pretty quick if you don’t refocus,” head coach John Tait said. “They showed a lot of composure after that first score and just decided to get one back.”
That’s what the Canadians seemingly couldn’t do earlier in the day.
It was a physical game from the start between two close rivals, Britain is ranked fourth, just behind Can-
“That first score can turn into two pretty quick . . .They showed a lot of composure.” JOHN TAIT CANADIAN HEAD COACH
ada. But the Canadians just couldn’t stick to their game plan under the pressure exerted by the British. They looked like they had sunscreen-covered hands, missing passes and dropping balls, and when they did have the ball they couldn’t get through Britain’s line with it.
There were a few moments for the flag-waving Canadian contingent in the crowd to cheer on. Bianca Farella sprinted diagonally across the field to chase down a British attacker who had beaten her teammates and was heading to Canada’s try line. She didn’t quite make it but there was no doubting the effort. At the other end of the field, Karen Paquin tackled a British player so hard she lifted her off the ground before coming down on her, hard. But, throughout the 14-minute game, they just couldn’t get the ball or keep it when it mattered most.
Kish’s view about what went wrong was straightforward.
“We fell asleep at the wheel, to be honest,” Kish said, after that first game. “I guess it’s better now this game than the next, which is the quarter-final.”
They had four and half hours between games — to think about what they did wrong and what to do better — before coming back out, to face France, a far tougher team than Fiji, which they would have faced had they won their earlier match.
“We took it as a lesson and a wakeup call, we’ve had a few of those this year,” Ashley Steacy said. “That’s not how we wanted it to go but it happened and I think it lit a fire under us.”
It’s not the dominant performance they wanted, but the Canadians are now just one win away from playing for medals, something the veterans on this team have been thinking about for the last five years.
“It sunk in when (Landry) went in for the try,” Kish said, about her teammate’s last second try for the 15-5 score. “Hey, this is our dreams getting more real and we want to be in that gold medal match, that’s why we’re here.”
But they’ve always maintained that they want to do more than win — they want to thrill Canadians with their sport and inspire the next generation of players.
“We’re here to show the world that Canadian rugby is a contender in this sport and I really hope that the fans see that,” Kish said. “Having people cheer for you, it’s like your 13th man off the bench.”