I was perhaps unclear in what I wanted to happen. I wanted the regex to fail on the lines it did not match, then return a false value to be evaluated by the if, have the if evaluate to false and skip it's contents, which would then allow the while loop to continue onto it's next iteration.
Each line of the input file does indeed consist of one (except in the special cases mentioned in my response to tachyon when it consists of two) table row(s).

Thank you for being an ever vigilant watchdog. The perlmonks community is well served by those who keep such careful, and coureous, watch over it's supplicants.

   -Etan