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SOCCER MEDIA REPORTS:

CANADIAN WOMEN'S TEAM CHARGED UP FOR WORLD CUP: Training hard, squad knows it must improve play after lacklustre Pan Ams

20th August 2007

From the MontrealGazette, an article by John Meagher and The Province

The Canadian women's soccer team won bronze at last month's Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, but forward Rhian Wilkinson said the team will have to play much better if it hopes to bring home a medal from next month's World Cup in China.

"We know we can play better and we'll have to at the World Cup," said Wilkinson, a 25-year-old Baie d'Urfé native.

The Canadian side will continue training in Vancouver before leaving for Asia on Saturday. The team will play an exhibition game against Japan on August 30 in Tokyo, before heading to Singapore for a few days of acclimatization. Then, it's off to China for the September 10-30 tournament.

"The Pan Ams were meant to serve as a tune-up for the World Cup, but Canada, which had earned a promising fourth-place result at the last World Cup in 2003, got a wake-up call when it was routed 7-0 by Brazil in a preliminary-round game.

Then Canada fell 2-1 to a U.S under-20 side in semifinal play. Brazil later beat the U.S. 5-0 for the gold, while Canada salvaged a bronze with a 2-1 win over Mexico.

But despite a 4-2 overall record, Wilkinson said the team was not at all pleased with its performance. "We had a rough Pan Ams, and you'd expect the team to sort of turn on each other. However, that never happened. I was pleased with that. We stood together and we took it. There was a lot of negative press and there should have been. We performed badly."

Wilkinson said that having some down time after Pan Ams allowed the players to recharge their batteries. "Having two weeks off from soccer was fantastic. Now we're back and training hard."

Although the players have a positive outlook, Wilkinson said a lack of international games this past year has left them poorly prepared for the World Cup. "Not including Pan Ams, we've only played five times all year. To have so few games in a World Cup year, is pretty much silly."

Canada has travelled to China, New Zealand and Texas for exhibition games, but on home soil it has played mostly against local male teams. The Women's team recently beat an under-17 boys' provincial side, but former McGill star Amber Allen injured her leg during the match. It is another stroke of bad luck for Allen, who also missed the 2003 World Cup with an injury.

Wilkinson said having the national-team training centre based in Vancouver this past year has been a good thing, for the most part. It has been a success. There are definitely kinks is etting up such a camp, but this is the first time for Canada, and there will always be kinks. The U.S. team has been doing these camps for years. They've gone through the kinks, but this is our World Cup year, so it's a hard time to figure everything out.

The ninth-ranked Canadian side, coached by Even Pellerud, will have to tighten its defensive play if it hopes to beat fourth-ranked Norway in its Sept. 12 opener in Hangzhou, China. Australia (15th ranked) and Ghana (47th) round out Group C of the 16-team tournament. "We definitely have to get back to a Canadian style, which involves a very aggressive defensive style, with everyone working defensively, then going forward," Wilkinson said. "We've always been able to score and we need to keep that up. Christine Sinclair (who scored seven goals at Pan Ams) is a scoring machine, but we can't just rely on her. We just have to play as a unit."