by Steve Feenstra
Klahanie Park in West Vancouver welcomed teams from Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and Vancouver Island for a full day of long missed rugby.
The MLR kicked off this weekend with six matches, four on Saturday. We’ve highlighted the Canadian players who are in the match day 23 for the various teams.
Only 3 matches this weekend in the men’s Premier division.
report by Peter MacDonald
[ed. it’s the editor’s fault this is late, dropped the ball on this one. The BCRU recorded the score as 84-8 but Peter stands by the 69-8 scoreline. Either way a big win by the Ravens. ]
After almost two years without a Premier League game, today was more about both teams enjoying the return of competitive club rugby, finding out what they have and building match fitness and cohesion. As it turned out the Ravens had too much for the visitors but on a dry field in late January Im sure everyone appreciated the opportunity to do their thing like normal, win or lose, cause right about now normal is more like excellent.
Pat Kay Retires
Pat Kay made a brief announcement on social media about his retirement from rugby. We understand he will focus on a career moving forward. We wish him all the best in his new endeavour.
by Mike Devlin
BLRC 3rd Div Men 24 Kelowna Crows 22
A great start to the 2022 Spring season, with two very evenly matched teams going back and forth for 80 minutes. The game decided only at the final whistle.
Sad news, I had the utmost respect for Keith, he was the Director of National Senior Men’s Teams at Rugby Canada when I first met him in 1998. I had just built the Rugby Canada website and Keith provided most of the content. We worked together, virtually, for the next few years to keep it updated. I left in 2002 and I lost touch with him after that. I learned afterwards that his daughter Rhian was on the national women’s soccer team (2 Olympic Bronze) and is now a professional coach at the Portland Thorns. Keith was capped 3 times for Canada at inside centre. A great rugby person and very sad news.
The men came away with 2 points at the Seville tournament only coming out ahead of Jamaica who were an invitational side. Wales, Japan and Germany all came out ahead of Canada, and Germany are also an invitational side. Canada’s permanent spot on the series may be in jeopardy, the one saving grace this year, due to COVID, is relegation and promotion may be off the table. Canada currently sit in 13th spot, narrowly ahead of Wales and Japan.
Well 4-1 on the predictions on the first weekend isn’t bad, the only home team not to win were the Vikes, the Pacific Pride didn’t look at all rusty going into the second half of the season. Some big scores show the gaps between some of the teams.
Jamie first showed up in our database in 2014 as a referee and then showed up frequently in our match reports as a referee up till 2019. He then showed up in media releases as the Rugby Canada Managing Director of Business Operations in 2021.