News out of Hong Kong is that Rugby Canada has hired Iain Monaghan who is currently the coach of the Hong Kong women’s 7s team. His role wasn’t specified in the South China Morning Post article, the article mentions “the Scotsman will have a roving brief across the Sevens programme as part of his job”.
The most interesting rugby story to come out of the weekend was the move of Eddie Jones to Australia as coach, as Dave Rennie got the sack in Australia. Jones had been England’s coach but was sacked and there was speculation around his final destination, it’s now confirmed to be Australia. Here are some of the articles on the subject from around the rugby world.
It was a close match in muddy conditions as the T-Birds went into the half down 21-19 but scored twice early in the second half and then conceded a late try to claim the win.
USA Rugby announced on January 5th the appointment of two interim coaches while their high performance review continues. Neither the men’s or women’s XVs team met expectations so the contracts of the head coaches were not renewed and a high performance review initiated.
BCRN: Hi Adam, we heard you’re in Victoria now and have started a business called AZ Elite Performance. Let’s start there and then work backwards to talk about rugby and football, the NFL kind. We saw a couple of announcements on your Instagram account @thezoobs. The first one, from September 5th 2022, I believe. Tell us a bit how things have been going since September. I should mention the website is www.coachzaruba.com.
from TWU Media
MORAGA, Calif. Playing the No. 3-ranked Saint Mary’s Gaels, Trinity Western lost 45-10 Saturday afternoon at Saint Mary’s Stadium.
Longtime local club celebrating a half century of competition in May at Straiton Community Hall
The JWRT, Junior World Rugby Trophy, tournament is back. The JWRT is the world U20 championship for Tier 2 nations. It was supposed to be held in Spain in 2020 but cancelled due to the pandemic, it was cancelled outright in 2021 and 2022 but is returning in 2023. The host nation will be Kenya according to Wiki, dates are unconfirmed but the last JWRT in Brazil (2019) was held in July.
Congratulations to Lesley McKenzie on having her head coach contract renewed by the Japan Rugby Union. McKenzie who is from Fort Nelson, BC, a small community of just over 3,000 near the Yukon and NWT borders, was first hired by the Japan Rugby Union in 2019 to coach the women’s XVs program. During that time she’s taken them from ranked 16th in the world to ranked 12th in the world, an impressive accomplishment.
Local rugby news is slow in the new year, so let’s take a look at what’s grabbing the headlines elsewhere.