The challenges for Canada keep growing. Beating the All Blacks in New Zealand is one of the rarest achievements in world rugby. Doing it on four days preparation, and coming off a 23-23 draw with lowly ranked Japan, is almost impossible.
Canada coach Kieran Crowley returned to New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup with the target of finishing third in Pool A. Canada have a win and a draw and are in third place now, but if Tonga upset two-time finalists France on Saturday, Canada will finish fourth unless they upset New Zealand on Sunday.
Across 107 years, the All Blacks have lost just 37 matches at home. That’s about once every three years. The glimmer of hope: the All Blacks’ last loss at home was in 2009.
Only South Africa, Australia and England — all World Cup champions — and France have beaten New Zealand at home since the turn of the century.
“The All Blacks are an extremely difficult team and we have, I think, only two practices until we play them, so it’s a bit of a short turnaround,’’ scrumhalf Ed Fairhurst said after Canada overcame an eight-point deficit in the last five minutes to salvage a draw with Japan. “It would have been nice if we had a little bit longer to work on some stuff, but that’s just the nature of the draw.”
Top-ranked New Zealand have averaged eight tries a game in this year’s tournament — thrashing Tonga, dismantling Japan and beating France heavily.
Fairhurst is under no illusions about the difficulty of Sunday’s assignment, already joking about what he will say in the dressing room.
“I’m sure I’ll use a few cliches, like ‘they put their shorts on one leg at a time like everybody else,’” he said.
With 54 caps and a decade of experience, Fairhurst expects he will have to calm down a few less battle-worn players.
“I think some of the younger kids might be a little bit overawed,’’ he said.“It’s just an amazing experience playing the best team in the world. It’s tough to describe.”
Crowley, a World Cup winner with the All Blacks in 1987, is worried that the short time between the matches will affect his team psychologically more than physically.
“The boys have had a pretty hard Test match against Japan ... we need to come down off the high of the emotional side of things,” he said. “So that’s going to be a challenge, but we’ll prepare the best we can.”
Canada beat Tonga 25-20 in their opening match and they were holding France at 10-10 before a second-half collapse resulted in a 46-19 blowout. The team which finishes third in each group will earn automatic entry for the 2015 World Cup, so there’s a lot riding on the last weekend of pool matches.
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