By Samuel Indyk
LONDON (Reuters) -Canada head coach Kevin Rouet highlighted the uphill task that his team of underdogs had to take on to even reach the Rugby World Cup final after they lost to England at Twickenham on Saturday.
“It was a lot of sacrificing of their own lives to just play rugby and go to the World Cup,” said Rouet after the 33-13 defeat, acknowledging that Canada’s rugby federation “do their best”.
Funding remains a big issue, with the Canadian women not fully professional, unlike their hosts, and having to crowdfund their trip to the tournament.
Rouet said some of his team earned around 400 pounds ($536.00) a month playing the game, and could make a better living elsewhere.
“We need to just keep growing the women’s game to help them not decide ‘do I have a life or do I play rugby?’,” Rouet added.
The team launched a crowdfunding campaign entitled “Mission: Win Rugby World Cup 2025” in an attempt to raise one million Canadian dollars ($717,257.21) for travel expenses and training camps but captain Alex Tessier said the financial issues were not the reason they lost the final.
“I don’t think we had the best budget if you compare to other nations, but that’s not what made the difference tonight,” she said.
“We managed to fund what we wanted to fund in order to be as prepared as possible. I think we could have won it with whatever budget we had.”
Canada won all of their group games in the tournament before hammering Australia in the quarter-finals and stunning holders New Zealand in the semi-finals.
But Rouet’s team had no answer to England’s relentlessness in the final, as the hosts won their 33rd consecutive match.
“It’s frustrating for us because we know we didn’t play our best game,” said Rouet.
“It was just missing 80 minutes of good rugby for us to be world champions.”
Canada began the game as the brighter of the two sides with Asia Hogan-Rochester crossing for a try in the fifth minute.
But within three minutes England’s dazzling full-back and 2024 world player of the year Ellie Kildunne responded with a solo try of her own and the hosts never looked back, running in another four tries.
Canada, including second row Sophie de Goede, who it was announced after the game had won the 2025 World Rugby Women’s Player of the Year award, showed terrific spirit to get a brief foothold in the second half as Hogan-Rochester scored a second try, but they just fell short at the final hurdle.
($1 = 1.3942 Canadian dollars)
($1 = 0.7463 pounds)
(Reporting by Samuel Indyk; editing by Clare Fallon)
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