As crushing as it was, better it happened Sunday at Westhills Stadium than this summer in Rio de Janeiro.

The Langford-based Canadian team, leading 12-0 at half-time, was beaten 14-12 by a resilient French side in the quarter-finals of the Canada Sevens women’s rugby tournament to stun the weekend home crowd of 3,500.

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“We learned a lesson. Better to learn it now than in a couple of months in Rio [at the 2016 Olympics],” said star Canadian player Ghislaine Landry.

Canada rebounded later Sunday on the consolation side to beat Russia 27-0 and Spain 21-5 to finish fifth in the 12-team tournament, which featured nine of the teams that will play in the Rio Olympics.

“We finished the day strong,” said Landry.

England defeated New Zealand 31-5 in the championship game. Australia beat France 19-12 in the bronze-medal final.

The results left Australia still ranked No. 1 in the world with 76 HSBC World Sevens Series points, New Zealand ranked No. 2 with 64 points, England No. 3 with 60 points, Canada No. 4 with 54 points and France rounding out the top five with 48 points.

Canada won its pool Saturday at 3-0 and was 5-1 overall in its home tournament on the HSBC World Sevens Series. But the late quarter-final collapse against France was the crucial factor of the weekend for Canada and it continued to sting.

“I probably caught myself looking ahead to the semifinals and rested some players . . . hindsight is 20/20,” said Canadian coach John Tait.

“It was frustrating. We only lost one game and probably had two bad minutes [against France] in the whole tournament. But that’s the beauty of sevens.”

And also the heartbreak of this whiplash version of the sport.

“We were pretty down after losing that quarter-final game we should have walked away with,” said Canadian captain Jen Kish.

“A few mental mistakes let us down. We will revisit that France game [analyze it] after the tournament.”

There was an eerie sense of deja vu, as the hosts were also beaten in the quarter-finals of last year’s Canada Sevens at Westhills Stadium. The culprit then was England. The Canadians, however, rallied from that setback later in the year to win gold at the 2015 Pan Am Games at BMO Field in Toronto and finish the year ranked No. 2 in the world to qualify for the Rio Olympics.

The joke making the rounds Sunday was, so maybe, the Canadians have the rugby world just where they want it.

“Yeah, the same pattern . . . maybe this sets us up well for Rio,” quipped Tait.

That is the goal, but a serious one.

Canadian captain Kish, in an on-field PA interview, addressed the large crowd Sunday in Langford and thanked it for coming out: “Thank-you for supporting us. This shows the spirit of rugby is really strong in Canada. We’ll keep building to Rio and we’ll make you proud.”

cdheensaw@timescolonist.com