It’s official from World Rugby, Canada has qualified for the 2027 Rugby World Cup. One extraordinary game, the win against USA, with the return of Tyler Ardron who scored 4 tries, and Evan Olmstead who was massive in the tight five. Canada have already exceeded their accomplishments from the 2023 World Cup cycle where they failed to qualify.
Two blowouts this weekend with UBC crushing TWU 76-0 to start their Coastal Cup and men’s University Championship qualification on a strong note and the UVic women continue their unbeaten run in the women’s University Championship qualification with a 74-10 pummeling of the University of Calgary Dinos. The UBC game video is archived below, we’ll post photos of the UVic match later today. There’s also match reports posted below courtesy of Thunderbirds and Vikes media.
Canada were ahead 19-5 at the half but it wasn’t a comfortable lead as Scotland had much of the play in the first 30 minutes and it was a yellow card picked up by the TMO at the 30′ that turned the match around. The referee had penalized Canada heavily early in the match, often getting the scrum infractions wrong, penalizing Canada even though they had the stronger scrum. She also missed the important yellow card infraction where a Scottish hand knocked the ball on from an offside position near the goal line, the TMO picked it up. What ensued was a penalty try from the scrum and a try by Emily Tuttosi that took a close 7-5 match to 19-5 at the half.
The club rugby season for youth is in the fall, in the spring it’s school based. Depending on the club, there will be teams at the U18, U16, U14 level for boys and girls. The BCRU find a club page is here. The season kicks off September 7th with 3 weeks of 7s and then the XVs season starts September 28th with 6 weeks of rugby before the playoffs start on November 23rd. The finals will be held on the mainland this year at the Langley Event Centre on December 7th.
This is the Pacific Pride playing roster for the fall of the 2025-26 season. There are 29 players listed including five U20 players. Some of the players may move on to MLR in the spring season and new players may come in for the spring part of the season. We’ve also listed the Pride schedule as of August 2025. The first match will be September 13th at UVic.
World Rugby has announced the upcoming SVNS series for 2025-26 and there are some significant changes. There will be 6 Series events and 3 World Championship events. The Series events will all be 2 days, including Vancouver, and will start with Dubai (29-30 November, 2025), Cape Town (6-7 December, 2025), Singapore (31 January-1 February, 2026), Australia (7-8 February, 2026), Vancouver (7-8 March, 2026), USA (14-15 March, 2026). The World Championship events start in April and are 3 day events, Hong Kong (17-19 April, 2026), Valladolid (29-31 May, 2026), Bordeaux (5-7 June, 2026).
The rugby season in BC started this Saturday with a university rivalry, UVic vs UBC. The UBC Thunderbirds are defending national title holders and go into the season as favourites as highlighted by the CanWest preseason coaches poll, listed below. Both teams have some marquee names Piper Logan from the national 7s team is UBC scrum half and Carissa Norsten playing fullback for UVic, also on the national 7s team, was World Rugby Rookie of the Year on the 7s circuit in 2023-24. This weekend it was UVic that prevailed and we have both UBC and UVic match reports posted below. Also check out Alfred_Rugby on Instagram for match photos.
Canada started slowly and finished with their foot off the pedal but had a strong 40 minutes between the first try at 16′ and their last try at 55′. It wasn’t a complete game for Canada with a lot of handling errors and they’ll need to focus on the details a little more as they have Scotland on the horizon and then likely a quarter-final match against Australia. Sophie de Goede was player of the match. Coach Rouet summed it up, “We know we have a job to do to refine our game, I am excited for next week because we want to play a good game of rugby.”
Canada missing their two pros from France, Tyler Ardron and Evan Olmstead, aren’t the same team, that is obvious after this match. Canada’s goal was to get a 4 try bonus point, regardless of win or loss, but they fell short and now have to wait for the USA v Japan result next weekend. A Japan win or a USA win without a bonus point will see Canada through to the PNC semis and a spot at the 2027 Rugby World Cup. A USA bonus point win will see Canada start over again, and have to go the long route to RWC qualification.
A few stories of interest as we wait for the men’s and women’s national team rosters to be announced on Thursday/Friday. As a reminder it’s Canada v Japan men at 1am PT on TSN and Canada v Wales women at 4am PT. Hopefully TSN will have both matches in their Games on Demand archive on Saturday.