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Canada see room for improvement after dominant Wales win
By Joe Harvey at Salford Community Stadium, Salford
Canada head coach Kévin Rouet hopes to address his team’s high turnover rate after their 42-0 win over Wales.
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The victory has guaranteed World Rugby second-ranked side with a place in the quarter-finals of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup.
A brace of tries for McKinley Hunt and scores from Alysha Corrigan, Asia Hogan-Rochester, Taylor Perry and Brittany Kassil catapulted Rouet’s win to another bonus point triumph just seven days after a 65-7 drubbing of Fiji in York.
It was not all one-way traffic just off the M60. Wales enjoyed much the better of the opening 15 minutes but could not make their superior possession and opportunities matter.
Despite such a one-sided scoreline the Canadians conceded 27 turnovers including individual errors and Wales turnovers, although Sean Lynn’s side were unable to make the most of the possession gifted to them.
With a week until his side face-off with Scotland at Exeter’s Sandy Park, Rouet hopes to address a high error count that on any other day could have resulted in a banana skin.
“Maybe we have to chat about it, because it’s unusual errors that we did,” Rouet said. “It’s very simple mistakes that I think we just need to address sometimes.
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“We know we play our game with risk, so we know we can expect that. Sometimes it is keeping trust in yourself and keep pushing the boundaries sometimes.
“I know if our offload game doesn’t go well, our set-piece will go right – so it’s like having this balance of your scrum penalty, a lineout maul and if we want to be boring we can be.
“But if we want to be exciting, we can be exciting. We need to find a balance every time.”
Despite acknowledging his team’s shortcomings, Rouet is aware of the intense desire for success that his side has at this tournament.
Masterminding the team’s rise to second in the world and, subsequently, their tag as potential World Cup winners, the Frenchman knows that there is more to come from Canada in the weeks to come.
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With a place guaranteed in the last eight with week to go, they will still have to beat Scotland to top Pool B and gain a more favourable berth against Pool A’s runners-up.
As such there is no room for error and the work-ons are fairly straightforward for a side with such lofty ambitions at this tournament.
“Defensively it is simple,” Rouet said. “I think we gave silly penalties away against Wales that gave them territory at the beginning of the game.
“We didn’t need to do that. Offensively, refine those simple mistakes, talking about why the communication wasn’t right, why the catching was not there – because if we catch those balls I think it could have been a way better performance from us.”
MasterCard Player of the Match, Sophie de Goede, enjoyed another dominant outing at lock forward.
The 26-year-old was at the centre of wrestling back momentum from the Welsh with a lineout steal and concluded the contest with 20 carries, two turnovers and 12 points from the kicking tee.
“We didn’t quite start the way that we wanted and that full credit to Wales,” de Goede said. “We knew that their World Cup was potentially on the line and they were going to come at us with a lot of emotion and fight.
“They did exactly as expected and I don’t think we quite had the composure at the beginning of the game.
“We found ways to score and keep them off the board which was huge. Then we had over 20 turnovers and we need to address that moving forward.”