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Justine Pelletier column: 'I love this Canada team. I think it’s the best team in the world'
Throughout all of last week everything had felt normal. All the way through every training session in York and even the captain’s run, everything felt the same.
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When I walked out to do my warm-ups before playing Fiji, I felt the atmosphere. I could sense the people walking in. You can tell yourself there’s no pressure, but there definitely is a little bit more just before the game.
I was a little sloppy before the game. My hands just didn’t do everything that I wanted them to. I made two or three mistakes. So I told myself to refocus. That those would be the only mistakes I made that afternoon. And we left with a 65-7 win.
Those six tries from Julia (Schell) last weekend, they were a resume of what this Canada team likes to do. We opened the door for her, and she finished them. That’s what we want to do as a team.
Alysha Corrigan joked in the locker room at full-time that she’d just scored double the number of tries she had already scored for Canada. In 22 minutes. It was funny and I’m happy for her because she worked so hard.
It was a great performance. Even though the score as great for us, we still have things that we want to improve. Things we want to get stronger in and more decisive. We were up against a very good opponent too.
Fiji were very aggressive and had a very different style to what we had seen before. But when we adjusted it was all good.
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One thing that I loved was post-match when we walked around the stadium. We had gone into the game thinking Fiji were going to be fan favourites because they were the underdogs. That’s normal. Everyone loves Fiji and there’s a big community behind them.
But when I ran out onto the field there was all this red. I felt like I was in Canada.
This World Cup is much more accessible than three years ago in New Zealand. Not just for communities in England, but also for people from back home.
I really noticed that when speaking to the supporters that had travelled to see us. Some who had no connection to the players at all. There were families who had come out for that game and were going back to Canada because school is starting back up there.
It was very rewarding. Bigger than the sport itself. So much more than passing and tackling. We invited a Canadian family including two young kids to our jersey presentation and they were so happy to be there. They just looked up at us and had stars in their eyes.
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I realised then I was touching the lives of so many more people than I had first thought.
We’re now in Manchester this week preparing to take on Wales. It is quite different to York. They’re completely different places. We have our day off on Thursday and Brittany Kassil has prepared an activity. But she hasn’t told us what it is. So I’m intrigued about that.
Hopefully we’ll get to find some more coffee shops too. We have some real coffee hunters in the team. Me included. We rank all the coffee shops that we go to. We’re hard on them too. Some of us even bring our own machines because we’ve struggled to get good coffee on tours. We need it.
Like a lot of the girls I call myself a nomad. Outside of camp that’s because I play my club rugby in France with Stade Bordelais and in camp that’s because I enjoy spending time with everyone. There are no set groups. We all can spend time with each other and it will be great.
But the other day I did spend time with the other Quebecois on the team. One person was just doing work on a tablet, someone else was just making a bracelet. We just chatted about life. It was fun.
More than anything else it was nice to have a discussion in French. English doesn’t come easy all of the time. Some of us have known each other a very long time. Fabiola Fortaleza and I have known each other since we were 18. I’m 29 now and she’s 30. We played at university together at Université Laval and came up together in the national team. I’m very happy to work on our relationship and friendship on these trips together.
When Quebec played at the national championships with all the other provinces, we were always the loudest team. The funniest team. But we were also so good. It annoyed other teams because we were just dancing and playing games on the side of the field. Then performing on the pitch. We try not to take life seriously.
There is a really proud history of Quebecois players in the Canada national team that I’m proud to catty on. We have a strong French culture. We’re hard workers. It’s where the grit in our rugby comes from. You see that French flair in how we play rugby too. For a long time, we were the underdogs too and that really fuelled the fire of working harder than anyone and putting in the extra hours.
You can never underestimate a team like Wales. Especially after their loss to Scotland last weekend. They’ll have this redemption mindset and have nothing to lose. They have everything to gain on Saturday.
I want them to come back strongly so we have a good game and have a good fight. We enjoy a good fight. We have this rugby that has this French flair attached to it and we will be bringing it up against this more Anglo-Saxon style.
I love this Canada team. I think it’s the best team in the world. We’re worth being known as much more than a rugby team. We have a very good culture. A unique way. We’re just going to keep going forward. We love each other. Our community loved is. And we love them.