Canada’s Cinderella run in Olympic rugby came short of a fairy-tale ending on Tuesday when the women’s sevens team lost 19-12 to New Zealand in a thrilling gold-medal final in Paris.
The silver medal the women settled for was one colour better than the bronze won at the 2016 Games in Rio, making the result historic for Canada’s rugby program. It was a vast improvement over failing to get out of the group stage at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Games.
Few, if any, would have predicted this outcome, but the Canadian women were not amongst the disbelievers, having already ousted a pair of heavyweights (No. 3 France and No. 2 Australia) en route to the gold-medal match. And the win was no sure thing for the defending gold-medallist Kiwis, who were pushed to the brink and needed a late try to secure it. Indeed, this was very much anyone’s game.
The Black Ferns are the top-ranked team on the world sevens tour, claiming the last four events held on the circuit this year. The feisty Canadians, by comparison, were ranked fifth and did not win a single match at the last tour event in Singapore in May, going 0-5 and finishing in 12th place.
“Sevens is definitely an emotional roller coaster but you just have to stay in the moment,” Canada’s Caroline Crossley told reporters, per the Canadian Olympic Committee. “You have to play whistle to whistle, you have to take it in three-second chunks because so much can change so fast.
“There’s a whole range of all human emotions. There’s disappointment, there’s pride, there’s sadness, there’s love for my team. It’s just everything I could possibly feel like I’m feeling right now.”
The silver is Canada’s sixth medal in Paris (two gold, two silver, two bronze), with Day 4 nearing an end.
The Kiwis put the Canadians on their heels right from the start, scoring two minutes in at the Stade de France in Saint-Dénis, north of the city, when Risi Pouri-Lane took advantage of an overlap to cut inside and score under the posts.
Canada was provided an advantage when star New Zealand player Portia Woodman was handed a yellow card for a head-contact tackle on Toronto’s Charity Williams and forced to go shorthanded for two minutes. After some hard work by Olivia Apps — who made the news last month by surviving a cougar bite while hiking in Vancouver Island’s Strathcona Provincial Park — teammate Chloe Daniels of Sutton, Ont., went in for the try, thanks to a beautiful offload from her captain.
Less than a minute later it was the Black Ferns who were reeling when Charlottetown’s Alysha Corrigan grabbed a wayward pass and turned the ball up field, giving Canada a 12-7 lead.
But the experienced Kiwis fought back, wasting no time after the restart, with Michaela Blyde going in to restore the lead to 14-12. The Canadians pushed hard, hemming New Zealand at its goal line for a long stretch, but ultimately could not contain them. The Black Ferns eventually broke out, with Stacey Waaka collecting the decisive try with just under two minutes remaining.
Though falling just short of the gold, the Canadian women are hopeful the success at these Olympic Games will help to grow the sport back home.
“I hope we’ve inspired some young girls in Canada to join rugby and grow the game,” Chloe Daniels said to reporters, per the COC.
In the bronze-medal match, the U.S. stunned the Australians 14-12, with Alex Sedrick racing the length of the field as the horn was blowing to score the tying try before making the conversion to secure a podium spot for the Americans.
Final Placements:
1. New Zealand — gold
2. Canada — silver
3. U.S. — bronze
4. Australia
5. France
6. China
7. Great Britain
8. Ireland
9. Japan
10. Brazil
11. South Africa
12. Fiji