The Canadian University Men’s Rugby Championship is set to kick off on November 30th at UBC’s Thunderbird Stadium. Tickets can be purchased online at: www.universe.com/events/cumrc-tournament-pass-tickets-1J3L25.
by Peter MacDonald
On a windy day at MacDonald Park the Ravens prevailed in a close game between the two top teams from the mainland and Island pre-season competitions. The game hung in the balance till the last ten minutes and, but for a couple of early turnovers by the Bays, it could have been a different result.
Coach Kingsley Jones announced his 32 player list for the test matches against Netherlands and Namibia. The first match is this Saturday.
Canada finished in 10th place which is a good start for them on the series, they defeated Kenya, Hong Kong and Great Britain to get there. They lost to Argentina, Ireland and New Zealand. If they can keep that pace going through the season they’ll be happy.
Last week the average point differential was +8 points, it opened up this week to almost +15, helped by UBC’s late scoring surge.
On another note, congratulations to the Canadian women’s XVs team who put in a superb effort against the #1 team in the world in their narrow semi-final loss to England at the World Cup, best wishes in the Bronze medal match versus France.
It was an impressive effort by the Canadian women who pushed the #1 ranked team in the World to the final whistle. The effort garnered a lot of praise for Canadian women’s rugby from around the rugby world. It was Canadian heart and soul typified and how we would want all our rugby teams to perform. Canada will now face France in the Bronze medal match.
The two BC teams, UBC and UVic, came close to advancing but weren’t clinical enough at key times. UBC lost by a point to Guelph, in a game they had plenty of opportunities to win. UBC scored 5 tries but couldn’t convert any of them while Guelph scored 4 tries and converted 3 of them. UVic almost created the upset of the tournament as #8 facing #1, they scored 2 tries but were unable to convert either, while Queen’s scored 1 try which they converted and added two penalties.
Capilano First home stand of the regular 2022- 2023 Rugby season:
Caps hosted U-Vic, Rowing Club and Simon Fraser today and the First Division Women were away to Burnaby. The weather looked a bit scary but fortunately the rains held off for the entire event. Caps only managed one win today by the Premier Reserves but they were in the Premier match until the final whistle and it was exciting rugby. Thank you to Steve Feenstra and Heather Muir for writing the reports below.
BCRN: Hi, Brian I see you have a new book coming out called, “The Book on How You Become a Pro Rugby Player” the tagline states, “Develop Your Mental Strength, Play in the Zone, and Get Paid to Play”. Tell us a bit about your background in this area and where you got the idea for the book.
BLRC 2nd Div Men 9 Kats RFC 24
Saturdays game was the 4th game out of 6 that the BLRC have played with uncontested scrums. During the entire 2021/22 season, the BLRC 3rd XV played one game with uncontested scrums. The rule changes brought in by the competition committee prior to the season has caused what was a minor problem to become a major one. Last season the BLRC were short on props. This was, as always, felt mostly in the 3rd Division. Rather than forfeit games, we taught 3 or 4 guys to prop and made the semi-finals with one of those new props playing significant minutes in our final game. I always assume that if the BLRC are dealing with a problem, then all other clubs are facing a similar problem. That means that we were not the only club, training our huskier back rowers and fatter hookers to play Loose Head, and virtually no games went uncontested. This year, no consequences and 67% of games arent real rugby.