ROMANIA 25
CANADA 9
A controversial call against winger D.T.H. van der Merwe of Victoria proved crucial Saturday as Romania defeated Canada 25-9 in a rugby Test in Edmonton.
The score was 17-9 when a Canadian try by Tyler Ardron was disallowed after it was ruled that van der Merwe committed a high-collar foul in going after a high ball on a previous play.
Van der Merwe, who is from South Africa and plays professionally for the Newcastle Falcons in England, was yellow carded and sin-binned.
“We were told [in the case of] a fair contest in the air, they won’t be sending people off,” Canadian head coach Mark Anscombe said in a statement.
“That was a fair contest and as soon as you saw [van der Merwe] miss the ball, he pulled out. How that is a yellow card is beyond me and that was the turning point.”
It was one of two disallowed Canadian tries as Canada failed to take advantage of a red-card assessed Romania at 23 minutes.
“I thought it was a very poor performance,” Anscombe said.
“We didn’t do anything we set out to do and that’s disappointing. We played poorly against 14 men today, but credit to [Romania]. They showed spirit and played with more energy than we did.”
Van der Merwe and Cornish Pirates pro Brett Beukeboom, a former University of Victoria Vikes star, captained No. 23 Canada against No. 16 Romania.
Canada fell to 2-6 all-time against Romania.
No. 8 and former Cowichan and James Bay player Aaron Carpenter surpassed Al Charron as the all-time caps leader for Canada with 77. Ray Barkwill of the Castaway Wanderers of Oak Bay started at hooker, former UVic Vikes player Sean Duke at left wing, Connor Braid of Victoria at fly-half and former Castaway Wanderers star Ciaran Hearn at full-back. Among those in reserves were Phil Mack of Victoria and Conor Keys from the UVic Vikes.
Canada’s points came from three Gordon McRorie penalties. Fonovai Tangimana scored two of Romania’s three tries.
The Romania Test, and last week’s 13-0 loss to No. 12 Georgia in Calgary, were in preparation for Canada’s two-game, total-points qualifying set against No. 17-ranked United States next Saturday in Hamilton and on July 1 in San Diego to decide the North American berth at the 2019 World Cup in Japan. The loser must go through backdoor qualifying, which includes South America.
“If we want to give ourselves a chance to beat the USA, we’ve got to stick to our plan and execute better,” Anscombe said.
“We have to be a lot more accurate in what we do and we’re pretty poor at the moment.”
Canada clinched the two-game, total-point North American qualifier for the 2017 Junior World Cup against the U.S. 71-39 despite the 27-25 loss Saturday in the back-end game in Edmonton. George Barton of Duncan captained Canada.
