Canada’s Men’s Sevens Team finishes fourth at World Rugby Sevens Repechage

Canada’s Men’s Sevens Team finished fourth at the World Rugby Sevens Repechage in Monaco on Sunday, meeting Spain in the bronze final following a quarter-final win over Chile and a semi-final loss to South Africa. With the remaining berth for Paris 2024 going to the winner of the World Rugby Sevens Repechage, Canada's Men's Sevens Team has not qualified for the OIympics.

Cooper Coats opened scoring against Chile in the third minute of the quarter-final, converting his own try. Chile made use of a yellow card to Phil Berna to tie the game, doubling their score and taking the lead in the eighth minute. Canada rallied back however, with Jack McCarthy scoring his first career international sevens try to put the score at 14-12 for Spain.

Chile further increased their lead in the 11th minute, but a Thomas Isherwood try, converted by Coats, tied the game in the final minute to force golden point extra time. Noah Flesch was the hero for Canada, receiving a pass from Berna to score the golden point winner, giving Canada a 24-19 win and a ticket to the semi-finals.

Canada faced South Africa, the eventual tournament winners, in the semi-finals. South Africa scored four tries to win 28-0 and end Canada’s Paris 2024 Olympic qualification campaign, with one match remaining for Canada in Monaco, the bronze final.

Spain scored first in the bronze final, but Josiah Morra, with a conversion from Coats, tied the game 7-7 moments later. Spain responded immediately however, and scored two tries to take a 19-7 lead at half-time. Isherwood struck early in the second half, once again converted by Coats, but two more tries for Spain gave them the 31-14 win, with Canada finishing in fourth.

“It was obviously an incredibly emotional weekend, not the way I think anyone envisioned the year ending. Throughout all of this we remained optimistic and positive and we really believed that our journey could end a different way,” said Sean White, Head Coach of Canada’s Men’s Sevens Team.

“Any time you finish with nine guys in a tournament you’re up against the wall a little bit. I’m really gutted for the guys, they deserve a lot more. We’ll get away from all this and take a look back at the program as a whole and then find out where we can continue to improve. In the immediate future it’s going to hurt. I couldn’t be prouder to see the growth that this group had against all odds and against all the adversity that they had to face, to show up and put that kind of effort in each game, continuing to build every time they had an opportunity to.”

MORE INFO 

More information on the World Rugby Sevens Repechage, including full results, can be found on the World Rugby website here.