Author Archive: MarkB

Throwback Thursday – June 2025

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Video Replay of 2018 Men’s Canadian Club Championship at Klahanie: UBCOB Ravens vs Brantford Harlequins

It’s late Thursday and on a slow rugby news day I’m calling the #TBT option, Throwback Thursday. It all started when RugbyPass the news site owned by World Rugby ran an article on club championships around the world, you can read the article here. It was titled, “Every champion in club rugby across the world in 2024/25”, of course Canada wasn’t mentioned, it mentioned South America, USA, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, England, Netherlands, Ireland, Wales, Germany, Romania, Georgia, Argentina, Japan, South Africa, NZ… but not Canada.

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Canada Women’s XVs – June 2025

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Coach Kevin Rouet Names 38 players for Ontario Training Camp Prior to South Africa Tour

The Canadian women assemble for a camp in Perth, Ontario from June 20 to 27 before departing to South Africa for matches on July 5th and 12th. The 33 players from the Pacific Four Series are joined by 5 additional players Sophie de Goede, Madison Grant, Paige Farries, Pamphinette Buisa and Carissa Norsten. The big news is the return of Sophie de Goede, her first action since she tore her ACL about a year ago. After the training camp 32 players will be named for the travelling squad.

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Rugby Premier League 2025

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Rugby Premier League (RPL) Kicks Off in Mumbai, India with 7 Canadian Players Participating

The Rugby Premier League kicked off on Sunday, it’s a 2 week 7s tournament in Mumbai, India. The reason it’s of interest to Canadian rugby fans is there are 7 Canadian players competing. The competing players are Liam Poultan (Bengaluru Bravehearts); Kyle Tremblay, Ethan Turner, James Thiel (Kalinga Black Tigers); Elias Hancock, Rhys James, Briar Barron (Mumbai Dreamers). There are 6 teams in the league and 3 have Canadian players.

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MLR Rugby – Quarter Finals 2025

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MLR Quarter-Finals This Weekend: 23 Canadians Playing – New England, Chicago, Utah and Houston Into Semi-Finals

There are 23 Canadian players taking part in the MLR quarter-finals, 4 of the players aren’t on the Canada extended list Guiseppe du Toit, Reegan O’Gorman, Seth Purdey, Josh Larsen with Ethan Fryer listed as Injury Pending.

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Canada Summer Games 2025

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Canada Summer Games BC U20 Men’s Rugby 7s Trials on Monday, June 16th, at Shawnigan 5pm-7pm – Public Welcome

The Canada Summer Games are taking place in St. John’s, Newfoundland between August 8-25. The Rugby 7s takes place Aug 11-13. In 2022 it was just U18 women’s Rugby 7s, won by BC, but in 2025 it will be men’s U20 and women’s U18 Rugby 7s.

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BCRU logo 2024

BCRU Updates – June 2025

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BCRU Announce Limits on Imported Players for 2025/26 BC Premier Season

The BCRU continues to fine tune the balance of trying to raise the level of play in the BC Premier through import players with the responsibility of developing domestic players. Their latest decision is that a maximum of 7 import players can be in a match day 23, or in other words, 16 domestic players (ie. eligible to play for Canada) have to be in the roster. This applies to the BC Premier team and the team they enter in the Division One league.

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Cooper Coats photo by pjCARR

Canada Men’s XVs Long List 2025

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Canada Men’s XVs Head Coach Stephen Meehan Names Extended Squad of 59 Players for Summer Matches: A Breakdown by Position

I think Canadian rugby pundit Bryan Ray summed up the list nicely, “An interesting… and at the same time somewhat confusing list. Some rather obvious names are absent with no mention at all in the release… including a couple big names I was told would be in.” The obvious names missing are Tyler Ardron and Tyler Duguid, if they’re not listed, then they should be in the Declined category that RC published but which seems incomplete. There should perhaps be another category, TBD or Unknown.

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World Rugby Officiating Selections

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Canada Only Country in Women’s Top 10 to Have Zero Representation on Women’s World Rugby 2025 Officiating Panel

You would think being #2 in the World that there would be some Canadian officiating representation at the Women’s Rugby World Cup to be held in England later this year. All the top 10 ranked countries have representation among the 22 officials selected… except Canada. England, Australia, Italy all have 3 selections, South Africa, NZ, Scotland, USA have 2. There are singles from France, Portugal, Wales, Ireland and Zimbabwe.

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