Belgium deprives Spain of bronze in the first stage of the European Championship
The Spanish women’s rugby 7 team has been fourth in the first of the two stages of the European Championship which was held this weekend in Hamburg (Germany), in whose consolation final they lost this Sunday against Belgium (5-7).
Spain won both of its games on Friday, against Portugal (21-5) and Sweden (19-0)in a day in which Ana Cortés, Marta Cantabrana and Laura Maestro shone in attack, and lost the group final against France, that made use of the physical power of its forwards to win by 14-20.
In the afternoon session on Saturday, under persistent rain that made traffic around the oval difficult, the ‘Lionesses’ played a very serious defensive match to get rid of Ireland (14-0) in the quarterfinals, but they could do nothing in the semifinal against Poland (7-19) in the Sunday morning session.
Belgium deprived Spain for the entire first period of the consolation final, in which the ‘Lionesses’ defended fiercely in the central area of the field for almost seven minutes, until Geertrui Vercaemer, the organizer of the rival game, created a gap through which Abigaël Bokonda entered to open the score (0-7).
The second half was played at the very slow pace that Belgium was interested in until the final two minutes, when Mira Broeks was excluded by a high tackle and Denisse Gortázar took advantage of the two-minute numerical superiority to score Spain’s only points.
Carmen Miranda failed a conversion with a small angle, so the ‘Lionesses’ were forced to score in the last action (5-7), but the Belgians captured the oval at the restart of the game and kept it until the final horn with a series of ‘rucks’ in the fifteen-meter corridor.
