MLR Round 13 goes from Friday to Monday and in this round, unlike the previous two weeks, there weren’t any double matches for teams. There were 23 Canadians in action, 12 starting and 11 in reserves. New England are ahead in the East division and Utah in the West.
It was a relatively quiet week for the senior boys, but the huge story was the Claremont juniors defeating Oak
Bay convincingly, 38-22. It was only their second win of the season, but the machinations of playoff seeding
saw them leapfrog Oak Bay and SMUS into the top spot. More details below…
I saw Tyson Beukeboom had written an article a couple of days ago for the World Rugby online portal, RugbyPass. It’s a quiet Monday rugby-wise, I had just returned to the office from a weekend visiting my daughter and grand-daughters so this seemed like a good way to start the week.
Rugby Canada have completed the announcement of their summer/fall schedule for the men’s XVs team with the Canada v USA fixture in Calgary on August 22nd. That will give them 5 games between July and September, possibly 6 if they finish in the top 4 at the Pacific Nations. World Rugby have also announced the full schedule for the Pacific Nations. Both reports are listed below.
MLR Round 12 like Round 11 started doubling up games for some teams, Utah and San Diego had games on Wednesday and Sunday. Utah leads in the West and New England lead in the East.
Rugby Canada announced on May 5th a U18 men’s camp to be held in Ontario between July 1st and 7th, their announcement is posted below. Unfortunately long before this announcement there were existing age-grade provincial competitions and an international tour planned and announced.
This week, Shawnigan had a statement win over rivals St George’s and Oak Bay had a similar win against
cross-town rival SMUS to win the 30th edition of the Rees Boot. But Quw’utsun, with their win over Abbotsford,
will likely shoot to number one in the Provincial AAA rankings.
On a bright May day in Abbotsford, with a gusty wind blowing straight through the pitch from the south, two worthy finalists met to determine who would take the spoils and who would suffer a first defeat in months. Having played to a tie in February it was anyone’s guess who would prevail, the grizzled club men or the finely tuned student cohort.
The women’s Island Blue vs Mainland Gold series starts later this month with the ID sessions starting May 10th. The national team coach, Kevin Rouet, stated “the BC Blue vs Gold Series is the best standard of Rugby we can provide to senior female athletes in BC. These games are an important part of the pathway for athletes to access the Canadian National Senior Women’s program or Canada Select team. I am very excited to see athletes playing in a multi-game format and showing consistency in performance in these high-standard games.”
The Canadian women won Bronze in LA at the World Rugby 7s final, their future looks solid as they look to compete in the 8 team World Rugby division 1 series next season. The men’s program, not so much, they lost to Kenya in the 2nd/3rd playoff for entry to division 2 and now the Canadian men’s path back to division 1 looks very complicated.