Canada won its first game on the November European tour 2008. Both teams were fielding a mixture of experienced players and newcomers to the test scene. Canada dominated up front for the first half but the Portuguese forwards came back strongly in the second. Portugal scored a runaway try early in the second half but it was Pritchard's runaway try later in the game that knocked the stuffing out of the Portuguese. The Canadian defense had had to work overtime up to that point.
Comments from Kieran Crowley, Canadian Coach.
"(Portugal) really took it to us in the second half - and we really didn't have that many opportunties," he offered. "I think our defense was great - and really kept Portugal out of the game, but we needed the ball more if we wanted to really open the match up - so Portugal did well in that respect.
I think we need to really focus on the positives - but we need to look at the video and make the adjustments and put in some hard work this week ahead of the Ireland match."
Comments from Tomaz Morais, Portuguese coach.
"They [Portugal] did so well, I am very happy, despite the loss, on how we did today. We have only ten players that went to the World Cup so lots of young players out there today. We are down 14-10 and five metres out - in control, and then boom - Canada takes it the other way - very hard for the players."
Canada faces Ireland next weekend whilst Portugal has to wait until February 2009 for their next test which will be an ENC 1 fixture.
Coments thanks to and full match report from... http://www.rugbycanada.ca/index.php?lang=en&page_id=10&news_id=4355
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment