Gary Parker satisfied as Scots try for seventh place

Gary Parker: platform to build on

Gary Parker's side faced a tough assignment in trying to emulate their best-ever finish of fifth when drawn with the Canadians on Wednesday, a team that had high hopes of reaching the final. They duly took out their frustrations on Scotland in a 41-0 victory, improving on the 37-10 win over the Scots in the pool stages.

The Canadians fell down in their final pool game, losing to France, who will play Australia in the 3rd/4th play-off on Sunday while hosts England take on New Zealand in the World Cup Final.

Parker, the Scotland coach, was disappointed with the loss, but acknowledged that a succession of injuries had severely weakened the Scottish side after a competitive first hour.

"There's no hiding place," he said. "International rugby is very cruel and if you make mistakes people will punish you. But we came into this tournament ranked ninth or tenth and if people said then that we'd be going into our final game to finish seventh we'd have taken that.

"We've only been together for eight months and are developing our side with a lot of youngsters coming through, so if we can win on Sunday and finish seventh it will be a big achievement for this squad and give us a platform to build on. We certainly know Ireland well. We played them in December, then in the Six Nations, in a training game and now we're meeting again in the last game of the season."