World Rugby today announced $2.5M USD funding towards Olympic qualified 7s teams. This just after England and Wales announced they were shutting down their 7s programs.
While rugby is in a bit of a holding pattern in many parts of the world there are some updates with organizations planning for rugby to come back online in the near future. Some of it positive, using the time to update programs, some of it negative with funding being lost to programs.
The Canadian rugby tour of 1902-03 to the UK isn’t well documented. It’s a tour that deserves some recognition, it was the first Canadian rugby tour overseas, it even predates the famous All Blacks 1905 tour to the UK.
The PRO 14 wraps up their 2019-2020 regular season this weekend with the top four teams going into the semis next weekend.
It was a great initiative that caught the eye of World Rugby. They published the article on their French website, we made a modest effort to translate it to English (article appended below).
ViaSport, the provincial authority on Return to Sport protocol, announced the “Progressively Loosen” stage will start August 24th. “As of August 24, sport activities should adhere to the Progressively Loosen stage of the Sport Activity Chart.”
With Super Rugby Aotearoa over, we’re now going to switch our attention to the four week conclusion of PRO 14 which starts this weekend.
Pacific Pride
I touched base with Jamie Cudmore over the phone to find out what’s happening there. They’re doing as much as they can while conforming to provincial health regulations. That means they’re focused on fitness and skills work in small groups, both inside in the gym and outside on the field.
The Crusaders v Blues match was cancelled due to COVID and each team were awarded 2 points. With the Hurricanes loss to the Highlanders it didn’t effect the standings with the Blues finishing second and the Hurricanes third.
World Rugby will select the next four World Cups (2 for men, 2 for women) in the same process. The World Rugby article below gives more details but basically the process starts Feb 2021 with a dialogue phase. The formal phase starts May 2021 with submissions expected by January 2022. Evaluation by World Rugby starts February 2022 and a vote takes place in May 2022.