The MLR season is almost over with the Division finals this weekend and the league final next weekend. There are 8 Canadians in action with New England having the most Canadians in the roster.
It was a lot to a little for the Jaguares XV side as they grew a 47-0 lead and coasted to a 80-10 win over the Ravens. The Ravens tries were scored by Blake Mahovic and Alex Ball. In the second game Penarol defeated American Raptors 26-10.
It was a good snapshot of where Canada are now with the World Cup in the fall. They’re ranked 4th which is a pretty accurate evaluation. England look favourites to win the World Cup, New Zealand are trying to close the gap and they were the class of this tournament. France defeated NZ twice last fall in France.
Kingsley Jones has named his 30 players for the two tests this summer. The good news is that potentially 3 players who played for Canada West in the Coast to Coast Cup may get to represent this summer. We say potentially because Jones does have a history of selecting players on the long list and then they don’t get in the match day 23 over a series of games.
USA named their 30 player squad for 3 matches in July, a warmup game against the French Barbarians and the home and away World Cup Qualifier series against Chile. Of the 30 players 22 are from MLR (8 from European clubs) and interestingly, 13 of the 22 made the weekly MLR First XV list on one or more occasions.
New York and Seattle have advanced to their division finals next week. New York will visit New England and Seattle will visit Houston.
We’ve been meaning to run these various stories but with news time ticking down we’ve compiled them into one article.
Evan Olmstead
Even Olmstead is moving from Biarritz to Agen for the next two seasons. Agen are struggling a bit in Pro D2, sitting in 13th place, two spots up from the relegation zone. His move there will hopefully help them move up in the rankings towards the Top 14 promotion zone.
The MLR regular season has wrapped up and it’s time to draw some conclusions from the First XV Selections.
This was Canada West’s second 11 try match in a row. They certainly didn’t have problems crossing the line in their two matches.
[ed. Update the Austin Gilronis have been disqualified from the playoffs by the league “Due to a violation of league rules”. San Diego or Seattle will replace them depending on weekend results.]