A couple of MLR preseason news items that impact Canadian rugby fans. The LA franchise is in Fiji to play the Drua this evening, the team includes 6 Canadian players. Also the Seattle Seawolves match vs Canada Selects, scheduled for Feb. 7th has been called off, the Seawolves will play the local Seattle club side instead.
The Steve Meehan hiring is basically old news, most Canadian rugby fans aren’t happy but they’ve moved on. Which is why it’s difficult to understand why RugbyPass posted a Rugby Canada explanation today (January 21st) that was extremely poorly presented and not very credible. It’s an Ai (artificial intelligence) voice reading a script to slides, it’s not very convincing.
There’s not a lot of published data on the number of women’s caps so we reached out to Liz Montroy, the Rugby Canada Communications Manager, and she sent this data. It will be updated with more information, such as match/date of first cap at a later date, but this is a good start.
This is a rugby wrapup for the weekend of January 18th 2025. The BC Rugby leagues resume next weekend in most divisions except Premier which is February 1st. UBC toured down to Washington State for an exhibition match. The PWR, Premiership Women’s Rugby, in the UK wrapped up Round 14 with 16 Canadians in action. We have more details on those below. Coming up on the horizon is the Six Nations, and yes for members, we will putting them up for download, as we have since 2016. The Six Nations schedule is posted below.
Thanks to Peter Muirhead who put together these league tables, they represent the league standings going into the spring season which starts next weekend, January 25th in most leagues, February 1st for the BC Premier.
RugbyPass, owned by World Rugby, published an article on Scott Lawrence, the USA head coach (and GM), this week. It’s worth a read, it outlines his plans for the men’s XVs rugby program and how the U20 and U18 teams fit into that picture. It also talks about the results he’s getting, 3 wins in November against good teams, Portugal, Spain, Tonga, raising USA to #15 in the world rankings.
Congratulations to the nine 2024 Hall of Fame inductees. Their profiles are linked below but I have favourite memories for several of them who I’ve crossed paths with in the rugby world.
The BCRU released its summer schedule for the BC Bears provincial teams. The one group missing is the senior men and it highlights the holding pattern men’s high performance rugby in Canada is currently in. The issue largely goes back to a lack of direction from Rugby Canada on the men’s high performance pathway.
I received a nice note from Ian Smith, one of the UVic Vikes rugby players who is also their fundraising lead. It’s about their Blood Drive initiative to support Canadian Blood Services while also supporting UVic sports through pledges. You can read the note below which has links to their pledge form and the Canadian Blood Services donor form. Last year over 60 student-athletes and friends donated blood and they reached 127 pledges, a number they hope to exceed this year.
BCRN: Hi Robin, I saw you released a new training app called MacDowell Performance, it’s powered by Athlete Health First. Before we get into the app let’s talk about Athlete Health First, I understand there’s an interesting history there with the company and the founder.