GEORGIA聽 54
CANADA聽 22
sa国际传媒鈥檚 pugnacious captain, Phil Mack of Victoria, has never given anything but his all on the rugby pitch.
But it wasn鈥檛 enough on Saturday in Tbilisi as Langford-based sa国际传媒 fell 54-22 to world-No. 12 Georgia in a Test match.
Guiding sa国际传媒鈥檚 pace from his scrum-half position, the Oak Bay High and University of Victoria Vikes product assisted on two Canadian tries with sharp passes to outside-centre and Newcastle Falcons pro DTH Van der Merwe of Victoria and winger and Castres pro Taylor Paris of Barrie, Ont.
Brock Staller from Surrey scored sa国际传媒鈥檚 other try.
鈥淚t was a bit of a shootout,鈥� Mack said in a statement from Rugby sa国际传媒.
He said the national side continues to shoot itself in the cleats: 鈥淚 think we鈥檙e our worst enemy sometimes. We knew Georgia had a really strong forward pack, and we needed to front up, and at times we did.
鈥淥nce Georgia got on the front foot, they are hard to stop. That鈥檚 something we鈥檙e going to have to work on. When we kept the ball in play and used it, we were pretty successful. But we didn鈥檛 take advantage of our chances.鈥�
Josh Larsen of Parksville started at lock and former Castaway Wanderers Jake Ilnicki and Ray Barkwill on the front row while Guiseppe du Toit and Conor Keys of the UVic Vikes and Cole Keith of James Bay came on in reserve.
The result continued a humbling stretch for sa国际传媒, which has fallen from No. 12 in the world in 2011 to No. 24.
sa国际传媒 opened the November Test window with a 51-9 loss last week against the New Zealand Maori All Blacks at sa国际传媒 Place before a Canadian XVs record crowd of 29,480.
The Georgia and Maori fixtures were the first two games under Welshman and new Canadian head coach Kingsley Jones, who is based at the Rugby sa国际传媒 Centre of Excellence in Langford.
sa国际传媒 now departs for Madrid for a Test next Saturday against No. 19 Spain. That match will prove telling because the likes of Spain, Germany and Russia 鈥� countries sa国际传媒 should be beating 鈥� have moved ahead in the world rankings.
The Test window ends for sa国际传媒 on Nov. 25 with a difficult assignment against No. 9 Fiji in Narbonne, France.
It is all in preparation for the Americas repechage, total-point sa国际传媒-Uruguay set for Jan. 27 at sa国际传媒 Place and Feb. 3 in Montevideo, with the winner advancing to the 2019 World Cup in Japan.
It is the first time that sa国际传媒, beaten by the U.S. Eagles over the summer, has failed to advance to the World Cup directly out of the North American qualifier. Losing to No. 18 Uruguay would be considered an epic disaster for Canadian rugby.
