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.
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.
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.
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.
This year the PRCs have a slight change, less teams, higher quality. The number of teams have been reduced to four representing the four main regions of BC: Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Fraser Valley and Interior. There was an earlier post in March that explained those changes.
A couple of news stories today, maybe more to add later today. Bayside are looking for a men’s head coach for next season, starting in August. See the ad below, their Insta is @Bayside_RFC
This was the final week of the regular season. It had the most Canadian players in action this season with 17 starters and 12 in the reserves. Next weekend the playoffs start, in the West #1 Utah hosts #4 Seattle and #2 Houston hosts #3 LA. In the East #1 New England will host #4 Miami and #2 Chicago will host #3 Old Glory.
Mainland Gold won the final match in the three game series 29-24. It was Blue leading at the half 17-12, then 24-12 but unlike the first two matches when Blue then pulled away to win comfortably it was Gold who did all the scoring to end the match.
It was a strong win by the Canada U20 men’s team who went 2-1 at the Oceania U20 tournament defeating Samoa and Tonga. There were 8 separate try scorers in the match with Liam James notching the double. Liam is the son of Canada rugby great Mike James who the announcer called, “the greatest player of Canada rugby of all time” on Liam’s second try (see video highlight below).
The 2025 BCRU AGM is coming up June 21st. Gone are the days of in-person meetings, now it’s done virtually on zoom. The link to the documents and details are here.
One of the interesting documents is the Vote Allocations, votes according to the bylaw document are “based on the Represented Individual Members who have paid annual dues of BC Rugby as of August 31st of each year”. It’s a way of comparing membership growth (or decline) in various regions and clubs.