MONTREAL – It’s Westward Ho for the rest of this rodeo.

Canada lost the clean sheet Erin McLeod had going for the tournament three minutes before stoppage time and ended up with a second straight draw here Monday evening.

But after a five and a half hour flight today, the team will be in Vancouver for their Round of 16 game against a third place team to be determined. Win that game and they stay in Vancouver for the quarterfinal. Win that and they head to Edmonton for the semi-final.

Don’t critique the wins? In this case, don’t critique the draw.

It’s the trail they wanted to take and they should have played ‘Happy Trails To You’ for both Canada and the Netherlands for moving on after the 1-1 draw before 45,420 in Olympic Stadium.

Like the 0-0 draw with New Zealand in Edmonton, a 1-1 draw here isn’t going to satisfy a lot of people who were looking for more from the Olympic silver medal winners. That applied to the coach and the players this night. They wanted a win to take forward to elimination play.

But as they head West to stay as long as they’re alive in the FIFA Women’s World Cup, it’s going to feel just fine.

The worst-case scenario was to have the same result they had in China 2007 and Germany 2011 and be out of the tournament after three games.

“It’s great to be going on,” declared coach John Herdman of the relief of not having to say they’re sorry to the nation before this once-in-a-lifetime tournament gets into the fast lane.

Flawed though they were at times this night, the result – thanks to a 2-2 tie between China and New Zealand in Winnipeg, they’ve done what they set out to do.

“I’m loving that we’re taking the team back to B.C. where we haven’t played in the tournament yet,” Herdman said of the home base of this team for the past two years.

“That was our goal – to stay in the West the rest of the way.

“When I spoke to them at the end of the game, I think our players felt that they achieved something.

“Going out West is fantastic. We won’t have to deal with the jet lag. Montreal was a real refresher for the group. It was a fabulous atmosphere here. It was wonderful.”

First the Northern Girls drew a Canadian national team record for any sport of 53,058 for the opening game and then another 35,544 in the rain with a half hour lightning delay in the first two games in Edmonton. To follow up with 45,420 in Olympic Stadium left the host team with 134,022 fans paying an average ticket price of close to $100 to watch them play in the group stage.

And there are back-to-back sellouts waiting for them in B.C. Place if they win the first elimination game.

They’ll have all week to recover from flight today. The Round of 16 game in Vancouver isn’t until Sunday. Now they have to wait and find out who they play.

“There was a bit of an argument that finishing second might put us in a better place. Our opponent might have been Switzerland or Camaroon. Now we could play Sweden, Australia … even the U.S. or Nigeria. On the other side there are some teams that are a little lighter. We’ll see what luck brings us.”

One thing that this game brought them was a goal.

It would have been a better story if a goal in the 87th minute scored by substitute Kirsten Van de Ven didn’t end up sending Holland, making their tournament debut, to their own Round of 16 game. If she hadn’t scored the Oranje Lionesses would be on the next Lufthansa flight out of here.

It was Ashley Lawrence, four days past her 20th birthday, who will be remembered by Canadians as the woman of the match even if she didn’t get the official designation.

Lawrence, from Caledon East, Ont., scored her very first goal with the big girls to become the third youngest to get a goal (Kara Lang with two and Sophie Schmidt beat her) for this team internationally.

“I didn’t know that,” said Lawrence.

“But I feel honoured to hear that.”

What a time. What a place.

The only thing Canada wanted more than their first goal of the tournament from the run of play was to get it early.

The goal came in the 10th minute on a play Christine Sinclair originated out of nothing.

Having the Netherlands score late she called “a real heartbreaker.”

But they got over it fast.

“We knew right away at the end that we’d won the group. We found out what happened in the other game. That’s what we wanted. We wanted to be out there on that time zone. That will just make us more prepared for the next matches.”

You note she said matches. Plural.

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terry.jones@sunmedia.ca