It’s always interesting to learn about the BC high school programs, their history and who is leading the programs now. Collingwood just returned from a successful tour to New Zealand and Australia over the spring break. This was their 17th tour and they took 57 players, a junior U16 team and a 1st XV and 2nd XV at the senior level.
If you’re not a regular starter in MLR, can you be considered an automatic for Canada selection? That’s a valid question as Canada looks towards its World Cup qualifier this year. If you’re good enough to get a regular starting slot in MLR, it’s likely you’ll be in contention for national team match selection but that introduces a problem as Canada doesn’t have MLR starters in several key position, the halfbacks, an openside flanker, the centres.
After weeks without sun and with plenty of rain of late this match was moved off the Westshore fields to Cowichan which generously hosted the two teams on short notice. But a soft pitch, on and off rain and a slick ball led to a defensive standoff for much of the game with no try from open play being scored till after 60 minutes.
Round 7 of MLR saw the most Canadian players in action with 13 starting and 15 in the reserves. San Diego lost their first match and now share the lead in the West with Houston, Chicago remain top in the East. There were 4 Canadian try scorers, all in the New England v Utah match, Brock Webster, Nic Benn, Andrew Quattrin and Cameron Nordli-Kelemeti getting tries according to MLR stats.
Thanks to Peter Muirhead who put together these league tables for the weekend of March 29th 2025. He’s included a playoff “snapshot” which will be updated each week as the standings change. He’s also added a new column “ROC” to monitor BC Rugby applied sanctions that need to be factored in to make the win/loss/points add up correctly.
Canada have risen to fourth in the World Rugby 7s series with a bronze medal win in Hong Kong. They now have 56 points, tied with USA, with one more tournament in Singapore before the championship tournament in LA.
This is the last weekend of the scheduled regular season, there’s one more weekend of make-up games next week and then the playoffs start April 12th.
The Canada men’s XVs team will host Belgium and Spain at Edmonton’s Clarke Stadium in July. It will be Canada vs Belgium on Saturday July 12th and then Canada v Spain on Friday July 18th.
The Hong Kong 7s starts tomorrow with the women’s team kicking off at 7:30pm PT against Japan. Meanwhile there’s another tournament taking place in Hong Kong that involves Canadian players, that’s the prestigious Hong Kong 10s. Canada doesn’t have a team entered but there are 7 Canadians on the Hong Kong Football Club women’s team, called the HKFC Ice.
Thunder Rugby was a program started in 2013 to promote the sport of rugby to Indigenous youth, to give youth the opportunity to experience west coast Indigenous culture and to experience rugby and Indigenous culture world wide through rugby tours.