"We play [Georgia] every year," coach Romeo Stefan Gontineac said after Romania lost 67-3 to England at the Otago Stadium on Saturday night.
"Sometimes we win and sometimes they win," he said. "It is always fairly even. We never expected to win against England."
A win against Georgia is important because the team that finishes in third place in pool B gets automatic entry to the 2015 World Cup.
The loss to England was expected but the coach thought the winning margin would be smaller.
"We did want to have a better defence and have a closer game," Gontineac said. "That didn't happen today."
At least Romania improved on its last effort against England, when it was thumped 134-0.
Gontineac knew it would be difficult to beat England and it was made harder when the Romanians lost seven lineout takes off their own throw.
The loud din in the stadium caused some confusion with the calls from captain Christian Constantin Petre to his hooker.
"We were forced to defend and we didn't do it very well," Gontineac said.
Romania missed 26 tackles and this made it difficult to stem the English incursions into their territory.
Romania attempted to put its defensive pattern into place but was not able to do this efficiently because of the speed of the English attack.
"Their pace was too fast for us," Gontineac said. "We didn't have time to react.
"England played a very good game and we were disappointed that we could not stop them.
Sometimes they scored after only a few phases and I was disappointed about that.
"We probably had too many guys around the rucks and it was almost impossible to defend wide out when we had only three defenders against England's five attackers."
Romania plays Georgia in Palmerston North on Wednesday.