Spain and Dutch reach Euro final

Dutch XVs experience and Spanish all-round skill and power saw the favourites qualify for Saturday's the European Championship final.

Published by John Birch, October 9th, 2016

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Spain and Dutch reach Euro final

Netherlands 22 Russia 17

What happens if you take a world-class sevens team and get them to play fifteens on the back of one weekend of preparation? The answer could be found by watching today’s game between Netherlands and Russia.

The Dutch are by far the more experienced at fifteens, and also came into the game fresh from a big win over Switzerland three days before, whereas the Russians came into the game on the back of the European Sevens, and their domestic Russia Cup (sevens) series – and a weekend 15s camp just before the tournament. However, they did have some of the biggest names in World Sevens in their team.

The inevitable result was that Russia played much of the games as if it were a sevens game with more players on the field with the problem of a certain naivety balanced with a group of fast, and very fit, backs.

But in the end it was probably that naivety that cost them the game. Early on, given with a penalty inside their own 22 they chose to run the ball, sevens style, with the outcome that they filed to clear their lines and within a couple of minutes it was the Dutch who scored, though Pien Selbeck.

A second Dutch try followed before the Russians finally began to settle down, after which the game was far closer, with a try being pulled back before the half. However, sevens habits still dominated, so when Russia had a penalty about 10m from the Dutch line they did not hesitate for a moment to run the ball instead of going for the corner. And again it didn’t come off.

For the Dutch there were some real positives, not least the way their defence held up to waves of Russian pressure through much of the second half. Technically more organised, they kept the errors down and would have had a more comfortable win by for the third Russian try four minutes from the end, which resulted in a tense few final minutes.

Now it is the Russian playing for pride on Wednesday while the Dutch go on to Saturday’s final.

Teams and Official scoresheet

Spain 97 Czech Republic 0

In their first game of this tournament, Spain’s scoring rate slowed down in the second half after the bench came on. Unfortunately for the Czechs, Spain rested several of Thursday’s starting XV by putting them on the bench, so when the starting XV started to be replaced today there was no let-up in performance.

It took just over four minutes for Spain to get on the board, after which tries came at a regular, even accelerating, rate. A couple of uncharacteristically inaccurate conversion attempts by Patricia Garcia kept the score down slightly at the start (and ultimately stopped her team reaching three figures) – and the Czech also missed a very kickable early penalty which might have pulled them back to 10-3 – but soon the points score moved ahead of the clock, and so it remained.

44-0 was the score at half-time – 12 less than Belgium at the stage – but it was a far more experienced bench that now started to come on in this game, and with the Czechs also tiring, the score board began to accelerate.

The Czechs never gave up, but Spain are a team that were ninth at the last World Cup, with a core of near semi-professional international sevens players just back from the Olympics, making them by far the strongest team the central Europeans have ever played (and, for the foreseeable future, unless Six Nations teams are compelled to engage in European competition again, are likely to play). And, if it is any consolation, they did far better than Finland in 2011, who Spain beat 119-0, but the final score was the 14thlargest win in the 1158-game history of women’s test rugby.

Spain therefore reach the final against Netherlands. Whether the more testing route to the final that the Dutch have faced will count for or against them we will have to wait and see,

Match video

Teams and official scoresheet

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