Author Archive: BCRN

From the Editor’s Desk – August 2025

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Thunder Indigenous Rugby in NZ Claim First Wins; Junior PanAm 7s Kicks Off Saturday; World Rugby Introduces New Concussion Mouthguard for Women’s World Cup

A few news items for Thursday, the Thunder Indigenous Rugby program is in NZ, playing their final match in Wellington as this goes to press. They notched up their first wins in NZ earlier in the week, so congrats to them. The Junior PanAm 7s kick off on Saturday for the U20 women and World Rugby is introducing a new concussion mouthguard for the Women’s Rugby World Cup, details and links below.

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2025 Canada Summer Games

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BC Win Women’s Gold, Ontario Win Men’s Gold, BC Claim Men’s Silver

The BC women’s programs have been on a tear recently, winning the national U19 XVs title and now the Canada Games U18 7s title. They defeated Ontario in the final 22-10 to win Gold, Alberta claimed Bronze. The men came up second best to Ontario for the second time this summer, losing the U19 XVs title and now the Canada Games U20 7s title. BC claimed Silver in both cases. It was a close 17-12 loss with Ontario keeping their nerve and scoring the winning try at the whistle. Quebec claimed Bronze with a 17-15 win over Alberta.

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Canada v USA Training Camp

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Rugby Canada Release List of 34 Players for Pacific Nations Cup Training Camp: Did They Omit a Couple of Important Names

Rugby Canada released a list of “34 players to Canada’s Men’s Rugby Team’s training camp in Calgary ahead of the Pacific Nations Cup” but it appears they’ve left off a couple of marquee players as we understand both Evan Olmstead and Tyler Ardron are in camp. We’re not sure of the reason for the omission but we’re expecting both Olmstead and Ardron to be in the match day roster against USA. We’ll wait and see on that.

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Saratoga Cup 2025

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Vernon Jackals Win Men’s XVs, Yeti Rugby Club Claim Women’s 7s at 2025 Saratoga Cup Tournament

The home side Yeti Rugby were dominant in the women’s 7s competition, outscoring opponents 175 to 22, and claimed the 2025 women’s title. The men’s XVs competition was a lot closer with Vernon winning the final by one point over the Terrace team.

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Canada v Ireland – August 2025

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Canada Defeat Ireland 47-26 With a Dominant Five Try First Half: Full Match Video

It was a game of two halves, as Canada had basically won the match by halftime with a 33-7 lead. Canada went through a “blue” patch from about the 60 minute mark up to the final 5 minutes where Ireland scored 3 tries and were playing the better rugby. Canada lost captain Alex Tessier in the first half to an HIA and she didn’t return, her leadership may have been missed during that lull in the second half when the subs had been made. Florence Symonds looked good in the first half with 2 key tries, the player of the match over the full 80 was loose forward Fabiola Forteza.

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From the Editor’s Desk – August 2025

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MLR Down to 8 with Miami Leaving, BC U17 Camp Update, Tragically Hip Get on Board with Women’s Fundraising

A few news items from midweek, MLR purportedly down to 8 teams with Miami the latest casualty. The BC U17 camp is on and the first games played, the women defeated Alberta and the men lost a game to a UK touring team. The Tragically Hip have jumped on the Women’s World Cup fundraising drive with a limited edition T-Shirt with proceeds to the women’s team.

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Summer 2025 7s Tournaments

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Summer 2025 7s Tournaments: Bayside 7s on August 9th, Bula 7s August 16th, Westshore 7s August 23rd

There are 3 tournaments to wrap up the summer 7s season, starting this weekend at Bayside, then Burnaby on the 16th and then over to the Island for the Westshore 7s on the 23rd. Details on the posters below.

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MLR – August 2025 Updates

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MLR’s 2026 Season: What Two Team Dropouts Mean for the League

It’s a bit of old news now but New Orleans have announced they won’t compete in MLR 2026 and the two California franchises LA and San Diego have merged to form the California Legion, so down from 11 teams to 9 teams as it stands now. There doesn’t look like there’s any activity on a possible BC based franchise and how will potential investors react to the recent news. As a side note we heard the South America semi-pro league Super Rugby Americas has a buy in of less than $500K, compare that to the purported $10M buy in for MLR. Rather than hash over what’s already been written, we just threw the question to Grok for its “thoughts”, its analysis below

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Canada v USA – August 2025

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Canada Defeat USA 42-10 on Strong 2nd Half Performance: Full Match Video

After the first 10 minutes with USA leading 7-0 there may have been some thoughts that Canada had pushed the World Cup build up a little too much with the tour to South Africa. They looked flat and fatigued. USA were winning the contact battle, they were breaking the gainline on their carries, it wasn’t looking promising. Even at the half with Canada scoring a late try, there were questions. Those questions were answered in the 2nd half as Canada scored 28 points and kept USA off the score sheet.

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Updates from French Rugby – July 2025

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Jamie Cudmore Announced as a Forwards Coach at Nissa Rugby in Nice, France – Completes DESJEPS Postgraduate Coaching Diploma; Josh Thiel Signs with Monaco Rugby

Congratulations to Jamie Cudmore and Josh Thiel on new appointments in French rugby. Jamie has been announced as a Forwards Coach at Nissa Rugby, formerly called Stade Niçois Rugby. They were relegated last season from Pro D2, and will be playing in Nationale for 2025/26. They’ll no doubt be looking for promotion back to Pro D2 next season. Josh Thiel picked up a contract in French rugby playing for AS Monaco, they play in Fédérale 2 and just missed out on promotion to Fédérale 1, no doubt a goal for the upcoming season.

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