The Twitter account for Russia’s national rugby team was among those to pile in after their footballing counterparts suffered defeat to Slovakia in their World Cup qualifier on Tuesday night.
Stanislav Cherchesov’s team lost 2-1 in the Group H meeting in Trnava, after former Zenit St Petersburg winger Robert Mak struck the winner in the 74th minute – just three minutes after Russia had equalized through defender Mario Fernandes.
Fernandes thought he had gone some way towards making amends for his involvement in Slovakia’s opening goal in the first half, when the defender became embarrassingly entangled with teammate Georgy Dzhikiya at a corner, allowing defender Milan Skriniar to slip free and head home unmarked.
The image of Fernandes and Dzhikiya wrestling each other when they should have been canceling out the Slovak threat was soon shared on Russian social media accounts, causing widespread derision.
The pair's grappling match was even deemed to be more similar to the scenes witnessed in rugby by one fan, who directed it the way of the Russian national rugby team for their inspection.
“Take a look at Fernandes and Dhikiya, these guys say they train,” wrote the Twitter user, tagging the Russian rugby account.
Russian rugby duly responded by writing: “What is this, there's only two of them. [You] need more people, we hope the guys will listen next time.”
For good measure, the account later shared an image of a what a proper scrum looks like, rather than the version provided by Fernandes and Dzhikiya.
Sticking the boot in again after Mak’s winning goal for Slovakia, the rugby account tweeted with a pun about its choice of computer.
“It’s good that Russian rugby isn’t afraid of Mak [Mac], because we use notebooks from a different company,” it jested.
Russia’s defeat on Tuesday came after back-to-back wins against Slovenia and Malta to start the qualifying campaign for Qatar 2022.
Russia sit second in a tight Group H on six points, level on six points with Croatia but behind on goal difference.
“We hoped for more,” said manager Cherchesov after the defeat to Slovakia. “At some moments we had the initiative, but the set-piece changed the game.
“We were ready for it, the Slovaks barely scored from [open play] in recent matches, but we conceded from a set-piece.
“We were losing, we had to change the game. We changed the system, switching to four at the back, and released a second striker.
“We put pressure on, scored a goal, but then conceded quickly. We had chances, but couldn’t score.”