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.
Scholarships
The Canadian Rugby Foundation recently awarded 12 scholarships from the George Jones Fund (7) and the Thomas Family Fund (5). The names are listed below, click on the links below to read the scholarship winner profiles.
from World Rugby
World Rugby has confirmed that the womens edition of the Rugby World Cup will expand to 16 teams from 2025 onwards.
[ed. at the time of publication Rugby Canada haven’t acknowledged the change in qualifying process.]
A journalist from Uruguay, Ignacio Chans, creator of the Uruguay Rugby News twitter.com/RugbyNews_uy has broken the news about the 2023 RWC qualifying process for the Americas. The article, in Spanish, is here.
from Karl Fix
NICARAGUA NEEDS A HELPING HAND AFTER 2 DEVASTATING HURRICANES
We kicked it off with a $1,000 to the Howlers Rugby Club initiated GOFUNDME page (https://www.gofundme.com/f/74ah3-nicaragua-hurricane-relief ). Now lets show why we say that rugby is more then a game its a way of life!! Please send to all your friends!!
The pool draw for RWC 2021 was made yesterday and Canada have found themselves in Pool B with North American rivals USA. In RWC 2017 the USA made it through to the final group of four based on bonus points. Canada finished 5th. Both teams had a 2-1 record and both came second in their pool to the eventual finalists, New Zealand and England. That year the format was the top 3 in each pool plus the best 2nd place would go to the final 4.
Only in 2020 you say? Three of Canada’s top backline players, Cole Davis, DTH and Jeff Hassler have signed with sister clubs Austin Gilgronis and LA Giltinis. Cole Davis and Jeff Hassler are going with Gilgronis and DTH to Giltinis. Both teams are owned by the Loyals Rugby Group out of Australia. The terms Gilgronis and Giltinis are trademarks owned by the Giltini Group LLC of Australia. In case other MLR teams come up for sale, they also own the trademark on Gilacolada, Gilgarita and Gilpolitan.