Jason Marshall is hitting the news but in a different sport, the World Rowing Indoor Championships. He’s one of 10 athletes to compete at the Versa Challenge in February. The article below from World Rowing gives the details but we went through our database as well to scan through his rugby history.
World Rugby announced the match official assignments for the men’s Six Nations 2023. The schedule and assignments are listed below.
[ed. comments below]
I got on this thread about rugby fitness after watching the Japan SDS team win the World School 7s tournament in NZ. The Japan team defeated the highly favoured Australia and NZ girls teams to win the tournament. I watched a number of games on both the boys and girls side and one thing that jumped out at me was the gap in fitness among teams. Of course fitness alone won’t win 7s matches, but without it, winning is difficult. I contacted a number of coaches who watched the tournament to get their thoughts around the Japan win. One noted, “good skills and the fitness that allows them to use them, a desire to work for each other, plus a couple of strong orchestrators”. Another noted, “if you want to simplify why Japanese teams do this, it all comes down to 2 things, discipline and respect”.
[ed. update Japan SDS (Sevens Development Squad) won the girls title defeating the NZ and Australian U18 teams, a big upset. On the boys side it was the expected result, NZ U18 team winning.]
The PR7s have been going for two years now with four teams, the Loggerheads, Experts, Headliners and Loonies. The Loonies were unofficially partly a Canadian side but now have been given a geographic area of north central USA and renamed the Northern Loonies. The Loggerheads are presented as Southern California and renamed SoCal Loggerheads, the Experts show as central USA and renamed Rocky Mountain Experts and the Headliners as southeast USA and renamed Southern Headliners. The new teams are New York Locals, Texas Team and two unnamed teams from Western Pennsylvania and Northern California.
There have been a spate of coaching changes made in the rugby world recently. Last week Eddie Jones was sacked by England and Gary Gold “stepped down” from the USA job, the week started with Wales parting company with Wayne Pivac. They were all related to on field performance of the teams involved, England and Wales were not happy with their team performances leading into a World Cup year. The USA situation was more relatable to Canada, the coach didn’t make the Rugby World Cup, therefore he had to go, there were performance expectations.
The Pacific Pride defeated the Island Crimson Tide 54-25 to win the McKechnie Cup for the 2nd time in the cup’s 127 year history. The Pride won it the for first time in 2002, a few years before the program was cancelled in 2005. The Pacific Pride program was reintroduced again in 2019.
The Cape Town 7s wrapped up with NZ winning the women’s tournament and Samoa winning the men’s tournament. The top four teams in the women’s standings are Australia, NZ, USA and France, for the men it’s Samoa, South Africa, NZ and USA. That’s important as the top four teams in the standings at the end of the season qualify for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. It doesn’t look like Canada will be in the running for one of those four spots but if USA qualify then Canada’s road in the regional tournament will be much easier.
The four Provincial championships were originally to be held Dec 4th at Cowichan but freezing weather and snow north of the Malahat changed plans. The U16 titles were able to go ahead in Oak Bay and were won by Langley (girls) and Bayside (boys). The BCRU write up on the day is posted below.
One point to come out of the Men’s University Championships is that UBC are in a class of their own in Canadian University Rugby. They amassed a +116 point differential over the three rounds to win the title for the 4th time in 5 years. They defeated McGill 48-5 in the 60 minute match and took their foot off the gas for the last 20 when they were ahead 41-0.