Major League Rugby opens its schedule in just over 6 weeks and there has been some scrambling to make it happen in the COVID world. San Diego has moved to Vegas, Dallas dropped out and now Toronto has moved home base to Atlanta. The schedulers at MLR HQ are trying to keep up and just released a revised schedule which can be found here.
It was touch and go whether the Six Nations would launch amid COVID but apparently a last minute decision by the French Sport Minister to relax the quarantine restrictions for the tournament allowed it to proceed.
It was the four Canadians for Exeter vs the lone Canadian for Saracens so it was perhaps in the cards that Exeter would end the Saracens winning streak that went back to 2018. Starting for Exeter were loosehead prop Olivia DeMerchant, hooker Emily Tuttosi, 2nd row Mckinley Hunt and #10 Taylor Black. Starting for Sarries was #8 Sophie de Goede.
We had a chance to catch up with Canada 7s player Lucas Hammond and talk about his new real estate career while he continues his rugby career with the national 7s team on the road to the Olympics.
World Rugby came out with a bold statement in support of the RWC 2021 in New Zealand, vowing to set new match attendance records. This against a backdrop of COVID worries around the world and the NZ Prime Minister stating the “New Zealand’s borders are likely to remain closed for much of the year as health officials assess global vaccine roll-outs”.
With MLR about to start in just over 7 weeks, teams may be getting a little nervous about local COVID rules and regulations in their area. The San Diego team acted decisively and announced they’re playing home games in neighbouring Nevada, and where else but in Vegas, about 400km away as the crow flies.
An interesting development in the Victoria sports scene. Starlight Investments, out of Toronto, will pay $500K over 5 years to get naming rights to Westhills Stadium. Langford gets 15% of that but the article in the Times Colonist doesn’t specify where the other 85% goes. The article goes onto explain that the deal is big, “for Langford and for Pacific FC”. We’re assuming the bulk of the money is a Pacific FC sponsorship. We’ve reached out to Rugby Canada to see if they benefit at all from the renaming, they are mentioned in the article as one of the main tenants of the stadium along with Pacific FC and the Westshore Rebels football team.
News that Hong Kong has terminated its Elite men’s XVs program due to the financial pressures of COVID should make Canadian rugby supporters take note and resolve to keep its Elite men’s XVs academy funded and running. The Pacific Pride, aka Rugby Canada Development Academy, operating under the coaching of Jamie Cudmore and Phil Mack is one of the few competitive advantages Canada have over their Americas rivals. In order to get to the 2023 World Cup, Canada’s first goal is to finish top 2 in the Americas, and in that context they are looking directly at USA and Uruguay.
MLR will have to rejig their schedule as they’ve just lost a team to the 2021 season. The Dallas Jackals were planning on entering the league this year but couldn’t pull it off with the deadline looming in March.
Each year Thunder Rugby awards the Phil Mack Trophy to the Thunder Indigenous Player of the Year.