EDMONTON \u2014 Spain’s penalty kick on the final play of the game was enough to defeat the Canadian men’s rugby team 24-23 in Friday’s test match.<\/p>\n
The host Canadians recovered from an 11-6 halftime deficit at Edmonton’s Clarke Stadium to take a 20-11 lead on the strength of two tries by Calgary’s Matt Oworu.<\/p>\n
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Peter Nelson of Dungannon, Northern Island, contributed 13 points from the tee for Canada, but Spain capitalized on a last-minute penalty to snatch the win.<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez Bontempo\u2019s 25-metre kick sealed the victory for the visitors.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back yellow cards to Canada\u2019s props \u2014 Calixto Martinez for a high tackle and Emerson Prior for collapsing a maul \u2014 had handed momentum back to Spain. A penalty try and another Bontempo kick brought the score to 23-21.<\/p>\n
The match wrapped July’s test window for Canada ahead of the Pacific Nations Cup.<\/p>\n
Canada opens against the United States in Calgary on Aug. 22 in a match that doubles as the start of Canada’s 2027 Rugby World Cup qualification campaign.<\/p>\n
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“I think we showed we have the talent to hang with everyone,\u201d Oworu said after the loss to Spain.<\/p>\n
“When we were pushing to score at the end, we just slipped for half-a-second, and that\u2019s just test rugby. It\u2019s a game of inches, and we just missed on that last inch.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as we play in the right places and listen to our shot-callers, there\u2019s no need to search for other answers \u2014 all the answers are in the room. We\u2019re confident.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2025.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014 Spain’s penalty kick on the final play of the game was enough to defeat the Canadian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,8989,48,8990,8991,44,8987,7413,8988],"class_list":{"0":"post-8561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-calixto-martinez","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-emerson-prior","12":"tag-matt-oworu","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-penalty-kick","15":"tag-spain","16":"tag-test-match"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}