Canada's Autumn Internationals

[LittleGuy]

@ Toko I definately did underestimate Portugal going into this game. I was not surprised at all by Canada's defeat in Georgia, I in fact voted on Rugby Canada's website that Canada would go 3-1 on its tour in a poll thinking they would narrowly lose that game. Georgia is a good squad and could give teams some trouble at the RWC. I thought Uruguay would keep it a little closer in Bucharest this weekend but final result does not surprise me. It seems as though the ENC teams play great at home but don't travel well, Canada has beaten Portugal and Georgia handidly when they played in North America.

As for Canada this tour I have to give them a C+ for the tour, the Belgium game was mostly the 2nd tier players and they did take care of buisness but it was nothing spectacular. The Spanish game I thought was Canada's best game of the tour they kept their feet to the fire and the offense looked good. The Georgia game was dissapointing to lose and the scrum looked horrible but in front of 25,000 and a full strength Georgia squad losing by seven isn't the worst result ever. I actually found this Portugal game to be the most dissapointing, some really careless mistakes and stupid penalties made up for by some great play br Sean White and James Pritchard, Canada was missing a few players who returned to their teams but this should have been a bigger win, still they did claim the honours.

As for the individual players I was impressed by Pritchard as usual, Sean White looked pretty good at scrum half as well. Jason Marshall and Taylor Paris had good tours the young Paris impressing in his debut. Monro's injury set his tour back and it was a shame not to see Evans as he was hurt as well. I felt Kleeberger and O'Toole could have played better they didn't make the impact I was expecting from them. While at centre Van De Merwe showed why he is the class player of the Canadian team.

 

[Toko_11]

well you were right but IRB seems to be skeptical even after all we did in the past 4 years. Rugby has never been as popular in Georgia as it is now and its not just one generation we already have really good young players waiting for their turn U15's U17's U19's U21's they are all doing great. rugby already has deep roots in Georgia and in future our only expectation will be to grow stronger. unfortunately IRB's lack of interest in ENC is holding us back and the test matches like these with Canada and US are the only way for us to show off our true strength. which doesn't seem to be enough for Rugby Board. I just don't understand what else can we do for them to start taking us seriously. should we beat england and Scotland on the world cup ? I don't see any other way to get their attention

 

[LittleGuy]

@ Toko I think you Georgians are going to surprise some people in 2011 I expect you will beat Romania and may challenge the Scots, a lot of people think that the four try bouns point is a guarentee against you guys but I am not one of them. I wouldn't be surprised if you keep things close with these forward oriented teams and perhaps take some defending bonus points or maybe even pull off a shock upset.

For Canada we were missing a couple of players that should be at a RWC, like Cudmore, McKeen and Fairhurst for example. Ater the Churchill cup and spring tour I might be able to better give my thoughts, I think Tonga should be a win, but Japan is much improved and always plays Canada hard we have beaten France A but this would be a very tough game against the full strength side and New Zealand the goal wll to be keeping them under 60 while maybe getting one or two tries of our own although it is the All Blacks last pool game so they might be resting some of their players(we can only hope).

The final record for Canada this year is 6-2(4-1 in tests)

Canada 48-6 Uruguay
Canada 33-27 France A
Canada 18-38 England Saxons
Canada 43-12 Belgium
Canada 60-22 Spain
Canada 15-22 Georgia
Canada 23-20 Portugal

Not too bad in fact I could include a 22-6 win over Russia in very late November of 2009, The Japan tour before the list was a disaster though with two big losses.

 

[Toko_11]

I knew almost nothing about Canadian rugby before you came to Tbilisi but now i know the style that Canadians prefer. I think if you had a better scrum nothing would stand between you and Scotland or Italy.... for Georgia its the opposite we have a great forwards but backs cant keep up with them. At least we know what we have to improve and i hope something can be done before world cup... and I'm almost sure that If our best side gets to play Scotland we will not be far from the upset.. thats what happened against Ireland and it will keep happening until we finally break the spell and beat one of the the "Rugby Giants". I don't know how popular rugby is in Canada. Is it growing or dying ? do you have enough resource to produce quality players for future ? I hope you do because we are two of the few nations in the world that has a chance to cause an upset on the world cup.

 

[CDN_Rugby]

Well that tour didn't go to plan

However, I am not as pessimistic as most people are. Lets keep in mind that for the Georgia game we were using what is probably our 4th ranked fly half in Connor Braid and he only arrived, what was it, one day before the game? Not that he was to blame, but had we had Evans, Hirayama, and Monro healthy, we would have probably beaten Georgia even with our forwards playing the way they did.

With that being said, our forwards suck. As much as I want to be positive there is no other way to describe it. We have by far the worst scrum in the IRB top 25; what happened to the toughness with which Canadian forwards used to be synonymous with? Cudmore is the only tight five forward who is of real quality, and if he doesn't beef the pack enough, Crowley better find Thiel's and Rod the Cod's phone numbers. Or better yet, poach a prop with a Canadian granny in the Top 14, ML, or AP. I bet there are some decent ones who have been passed over by the home nations who would be thrilled to play in a World Cup for Canada. Maybe Geraint John and Crowley can use their connections to ask around.

What I think we ought to do is keep Tkachuk at loosehead, move Marshall to hooker (he seemed very capable in the lineout vs Georgia, and can provide strength in the scrum that Riordan can't) and find a tighthead playing AP, ML, or Top 14 to stabilize the scrum. Bring in Cudmore and pair him with Hotson, and keep Kleeberger, O'Toole, and Carpenter in the backrow with either Stephen or Dala on the bench. Do that, and I figure we can atleast prevent pushover try's and constant penalties.

And on an unrelated note, I wouldn't rule out experimenting with Dala in the backs. The kid has wheels.

 

[Wally]

Anybody have a figure for the crowds in Spain, Portugal, Georgia, Uruguay and Belgium?

 

[LittleGuy]

@ Wally, the Belgium game had 5,000 fans. The Spain and Portugal games about 8,000 and the Georgian game 25,000. I have thought the numbers were a bit inflated by the case of the Spanish game it really didn't look like there were that many people there but the game was free to kids so alot of them were roaming round the stadium. If your asking about the crowd for Canada vs. Uruguay it was held in Demver Colorado due to it being a part of the Churchill Cup so I think it only had a couple of thousand fans waiting for the U.S.A. game afterwords.

 

[Wally]

Nonetheless those numbers are encouraging. I believe it was Melhor who said the Georgian crowd for the USA game was around three times as big as the one that turned up to see the Canadians, but surely 75,000 is inaccurate?

 

[Toko_11]

Nonetheless those numbers are encouraging. I believe it was Melhor who said the Georgian crowd for the USA game was around three times as big as the one that turned up to see the Canadians, but surely 75,000 is inaccurate?

It was me who said it and here are more accurate numbers Georgia vs Canada around 22,500 Georgia vs USA 30,000(only 27,000 tickets were sold though). yah it isn't three times more that was just an exaggeration but its still a big increase.

 

[Shaggy]

Those are great crowd numbers for any match, particularly this year, when crowd attendance numbers seem to be generally down world wide ... I agree with what you said earlier, the iRB need to take advantage of the popularity of the sport in your part of the world, and promote it more with more quality international matches

 

[alexrugby]

Those are great crowd numbers for any match, particularly this year, when crowd attendance numbers seem to be generally down world wide ... I agree with what you said earlier, the iRB need to take advantage of the popularity of the sport in your part of the world, and promote it more with more quality international matches

If stated other way, IRB will finally lose East Europe and only football will be liked here in this regions

That will be terrible