The first round of the women’s CanWest series is on this weekend in Edmonton. The series includes UVic, UBC, TWU, Alberta, Brandon, Lethbridge, Calgary, Regina. The schedule/results and link to CanWest TV is here.
A disappointing tournament overall for both the men and women in New Zealand, both teams dropped in the rankings.
There are a few rugby events on this weekend for watching, obviously, the NZ 7s on CBC Sports. That kicks off at 12:10pm PST on Friday with the Canada men taking on South Africa.
New CEO Nathan Bombrys is doubling down on bringing in offshore expertise and doubling down in his belief the Toronto Arrows are the solution to the men’s XVs problems. Rugby Canada announced Alex Lee, previously with Ealing Trailfinders, and Richard Owen, previously with the Welsh Rugby Union, will be hired and embedded with the Toronto Arrows for the season. Outside of the MLR season they’ll be assigned Rugby Canada team duties. It’s an arrangement similar to Robert Howley’s, there’s no word if World Rugby are also paying these salaries, as they do for Howley.
Warren Gatland wants his coaching mate, Robert Howley, back in the Wales fold. His comments were captured in the Guardian article linked below. He basically wants Howley forgiven but apparently the WRU blocked the move.
Rugby Canada announced a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed with the Canadian Rugby Players Association (CRPA) which marks the beginning of discussions on a new collective agreement. The CRPA was started in 2020 and its first chair was Jeff Hassler.
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.