Author Archive: BCRN

Players in the News – September 2025

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Sophie de Goede in Contention for World Rugby Women’s Player of the Year – A Look Back on Rugby Career 2015 to Present

Sophie de Goede is one of three players nominated for the World Rugby’s Women’s Player of the Year award. The Canadian Press article by Neil Davidson is posted below. We went through our BCRN articles back to 2015 when Sophie was still in high school. During that time period she not only played for her high school but was also playing regionally for the Vancouver Island Crimson Tide team, the BC age-grade teams and the Canada Development team.

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Kamloops 7s 2025

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CW Claim Top U18 Boys Title, Abbotsford Win U18 Girls and U16 Boys Title, Langley Prevail at U16 Girls Level

The Valley as usual came through strong in youth rugby, winning 3 out of 4 top titles at the U18 and U16 level. Abbotsford claimed the U18 Girls Elite and U16 Boys Competitive titles, CW claimed the U18 Boys Elite and Langley the U16 Girls Elite.

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Canada v Tonga – September 2025

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Canada Fall to Tonga 35-24 to Finish 4th in Pacific Nations Cup

A better performance by Canada who were competitive in the match and there were some standout plays by key players, Matt Oworu for the second week in a row was probably the best Canadian player, he also scored a try. Brock Gallagher scored a brilliant solo try which was initially setup by strong work at the breakdown by Talon McMullin, winning Canada a penalty which put the ball in the Tonga zone. Peter Nelson put his body on the line to scored a try and that was setup by some slick play by Spencer Jones.

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BC Rugby Weekend of September 20th 2025

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Coastal Cup and University Championship Qualifier UBC Defeat UVic; Coastal Cup Pride Down TWU; Full Match Videos

There’s no Premier this weekend as the Kamloops Youth 7s has the attention of the BCRU staff and BC referees. There are however two Coastal Cup matches, one which also counts towards qualification for the National University Championships being held in November. UVic, UBC and TWU play a home and away series with the top 2 teams representing BC at the University Championships. UBC have already won their first match against TWU and this will be UVic’s first qualifier match. The Pride are visiting TWU in the other Coastal Cup match.

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Canada v NZ – RWC 2025

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Canada Shock the Rugby World with Dominating Performance Over NZ 34-19

Canadian rugby fans knew that Canada could defeat NZ, they’ve done it before but no one thought they would dominate from the opening whistle, building up a 24-7 lead at the half, and then 31-7 early in the second half. NZ scored two second half tries at the 56′ and 65′ marks to put fans on the edge of their seat but Sophie de Goede put the worries to rest with a penalty kick at 74′ to make it a 3 score lead with 6 minutes left, 34-19.

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BC Premier Week 1 – Feature Players

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Players in the Spotlight from Week 1 of BC Premier: Napolioni Bolaca, Mark Balaski, Brendan Kim, Morgan di Nardo

We had a chance to review the match footage of 3 games that were put up on YouTube, kudos to Westshore and UVic for putting up the live streams and archives of the matches, and to Burnaby for putting up the match video post game. We selected a few screen captures from the videos to highlight some outstanding performances. You can view the timestamp on the screen captures to watch on the videos which are included below. The players featured from Week 1 are Burnaby #10 Napolioni Bolaca, Westshore #10 Mark Balaski, UVic’s second row Brendan Kim and centre Morgan di Nardo. All Week 1 impact players.

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Coaching Summit October 2025

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Two Day Coaching Summit in Vancouver October 4th and 5th Featuring Phil Mack, Lesley McKenzie, Ben Herring

The Rugby Site is hosting a coaching summit at Capilano Rugby Club on October 4th and 5th, it will feature two international level Canadian coaches, Phil Mack and Lesley McKenzie. The website and registration link is here, the poster and some information on the summit is posted below. Well known BC coach Curry Hitchborn endorsed the coaching summit, the Rugby Site and CEO Phil Connolly , “the Rugby Site is THE best online resource for coaches, Phil ran a successful coaching development conference in Ontario a few months back. Based on feedback from some of the attendees I immediately reached out to Phil to see if he’d be keen on doing one in BC.”

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Canada v Fiji – September 2025

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Canada Demolished by Fiji 63-10 in Pacific Nations Semi-Final: Face Tonga Next Saturday for 3rd/4th

It wasn’t pretty and a bit painful to watch but it was a reality check of where Canada stacks up against a top 10 team. Canada has qualified for the World Cup but they’ll face better teams than Fiji in the pool round so they have a lot of work to do before 2027. In fairness they were missing a number of key players, Ardron and Rumball from the loose forwards, Olmstead in the second row, Coats, Webster and Coe in the backs, those players make a difference.

Canada’s tackle statistic in the match, according to the World Rugby Pacific Nations website, was a 66% tackle success rate and 155 tackles made. A 66% tackle success rate is not good, when Wales defeated Fiji in the 2023 World Cup they had to make 252 tackles.

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BC Rugby Weekend of September 13th 2025

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BC Premier Week 1 Results: UBC Draw With Burnaby, Bays Ground Ravens, Pride Fall to Vikes, Westshore Defeat CW, Caps Top Lomas

A number of upsets in Week 1 as teams have recruited in the off season and the playing strengths for the new season become apparent. The biggest upset reported by the BCRU was the Bays over UBCOB Ravens. The Bays finished in the cellar last season and the Ravens won the Rounsefell Cup. In another match UVic were down 19 points at the half and upset the Rugby Canada Academy in a close battle. We have the full match video on both the UVic v Pride match and the Westshore v CW match, courtesy of the host clubs YouTube channels.

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Canada v Australia – RWC 2025

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Canada Dominate Australia in World Cup Quarter-Final: Face New Zealand in Semi-Finals

It was Canada’s best performance to date at the World Cup as they scored three tries through the backs in the first 20 minutes and then the forwards took over and finished off the match with three tries, Sophie de Goede also added a try at the 18′ mark and four conversions.

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