A few news items from midweek, MLR purportedly down to 8 teams with Miami the latest casualty. The BC U17 camp is on and the first games played, the women defeated Alberta and the men lost a game to a UK touring team. The Tragically Hip have jumped on the Women’s World Cup fundraising drive with a limited edition T-Shirt with proceeds to the women’s team.
There are 3 tournaments to wrap up the summer 7s season, starting this weekend at Bayside, then Burnaby on the 16th and then over to the Island for the Westshore 7s on the 23rd. Details on the posters below.
It’s a bit of old news now but New Orleans have announced they won’t compete in MLR 2026 and the two California franchises LA and San Diego have merged to form the California Legion, so down from 11 teams to 9 teams as it stands now. There doesn’t look like there’s any activity on a possible BC based franchise and how will potential investors react to the recent news. As a side note we heard the South America semi-pro league Super Rugby Americas has a buy in of less than $500K, compare that to the purported $10M buy in for MLR. Rather than hash over what’s already been written, we just threw the question to Grok for its “thoughts”, its analysis below
After the first 10 minutes with USA leading 7-0 there may have been some thoughts that Canada had pushed the World Cup build up a little too much with the tour to South Africa. They looked flat and fatigued. USA were winning the contact battle, they were breaking the gainline on their carries, it wasn’t looking promising. Even at the half with Canada scoring a late try, there were questions. Those questions were answered in the 2nd half as Canada scored 28 points and kept USA off the score sheet.
Congratulations to Jamie Cudmore and Josh Thiel on new appointments in French rugby. Jamie has been announced as a Forwards Coach at Nissa Rugby, formerly called Stade Niçois Rugby. They were relegated last season from Pro D2, and will be playing in Nationale for 2025/26. They’ll no doubt be looking for promotion back to Pro D2 next season. Josh Thiel picked up a contract in French rugby playing for AS Monaco, they play in Fédérale 2 and just missed out on promotion to Fédérale 1, no doubt a goal for the upcoming season.
Almost 90 U15 athletes have been invited to the Shawnigan “Build a Bear” Camp from July 27-August 1. The focus is on skill building and game understanding under the tutelage of an impressive list of coaches. The U17 camp takes place the following week and includes a few matches, that press release can be viewed here.
What a result for the BC U19 women’s program, from last place in 2024 to 1st in 2025, kudos to the coaching team and the players. It will be interesting to see what Jake Thiel can do with the new Ravens women’s program in the 2025-26 season. The men returned as Silver medallists after losing a close match to Ontario, who claim their second consecutive Gold.
The BCRU are running Level 1 Officiating courses in September and October in the following locations. Their media release is posted below with a highlight on local referee Kristine Lovatt who recently officiated the Brazil vs Netherlands match. The registration page is here.
I analyzed the July rankings for Canadian men and women XVs programs from 2004 to 2025. It tells a tale of two programs.
The exact question from the reader, in the comments section, was: I remember being young and reading about rugby matches between BC Bears and Ontario Blues and Atlantic Rock. I think there was a team in the Prairies too. Do these teams still exist? What happened to them? Weren’t they supposed to be the step below the national team; a feeder for the national team?