This is the Christmas message we used in 2017, the part thanking sponsors and supporters, not much has changed in that regard. We’ve added Gilbert Canada to the sponsorship family, so a special shout out to them in 2020 and their Sales Manager, Robin MacDowell.
from World Rugby
World Rugby has announced the match officials for the mens Guinness Six Nations 2021 which runs from 6 February to 20 March.
The BCRU sent out a final 2020 missive on the 18th of December and the news isn’t great. They’re basically predicting a post Spring-break time frame for any type of contact rugby. The exact wording is as follows: “Phase 4 Return to Rugby activities (i.e. inter-club competition, modified contact) unfortunately is further away than we had hoped… We remain hopeful that some sort of competition will be possible after Spring-break, at the very least, ‘end of season’ regional tournaments.”
from Rugby Canada
Rugby Canada are delighted to announce that applications for the NCCP Competition Development (World Rugby Level 3) Course are now open.
Canada has never missed qualifying for a Rugby World Cup, they just squeezed into the last one in Japan when they went to the repechage and found two top European sides had been disqualified due to player ineligibility. Germany had suddenly found themselves the top European side (Europe 3) in the repechage so Canada just had to dispatch Germany, Kenya and Hong Kong to make the World Cup. They were fortunate, that was Plan C. Canada has always gone Plan A before that.
The Canadian University Mens Rugby Championship was initiated in 2017 with the assistance of a Canadian Rugby Foundation grant. The inaugural tournament was held at Guelph University and won by the UBC Thunderbirds.
The Rugby Community in Canada is fairly close knit so it didn’t take long for the sad news to percolate throughout the community. Only 27, Jake passed away suddenly on December 7th, according to his home club in Lindsay, Ontario.
There are 18 weeks in the 2021 MLR regular season running from March 20th to July 18th. Each team has 16 matches with 8 home games.
There has been a lot written lately about transgender athletes in sports and particularly in rugby as World Rugby recently presented guidelines that recommended transwomen were not to play women’s contact rugby at the international level based on safety concerns. They also stated that national unions could apply their own guidelines on contact rugby below the international level. Rugby Canada did this and have a policy that allows transwomen to participate in women’s contact rugby at all levels (below international level).
The BCRU sent letters out to clubs today advising them that all sanctioned in-person rugby activity will be suspended until January 3rd 2021.