A couple of reminders from the BCRU, the ID Sessions for Youth in April and Volunteers Required for BC Club Finals Day in Burnaby. Info and links below.
Thanks to Peter Muirhead who put together these league tables for the weekend ending April 7th 2024.
I had a chance to drop by Starlight Stadium, aka Westhills Stadium, to watch the Meralomas vs Pride match. The Lomas have been a success story in the BC Premier, going from 1-8 in the 2021-22 season to top contenders last season and this season.
The women’s team lost to Fiji in the 5th/6th final, 19-15, that result leaves them in 5th place in the standings with 72 points. The USA are ahead of them by 10 with 82 points and Fiji are behind them by 18 with 54 points. With one tournament left in Singapore, it’s likely Canada women will finish the regular season in 5th place before entering the final seeding tournament in Madrid. The final tournament will determine the winner of the series, not the total points in the series, a change by World Rugby. In Madrid the top 8 teams will be divided into two pools with 1,4,5,8 in one pool and 2,3,6,7 in the other pool. Currently that would put Canada in a pool with USA, GB and whoever finishes first, currently tied between Australia and NZ.
This is the 2nd last weekend of the regular season before the playoffs start on April 20th. The top 6 make the playoffs, the Pride aren’t eligible so #7 in the standings is the last playoff spot.
The highlight so far this week was Dewald Kotze scoring 5 tries for Dallas in the match against Seattle. Rob Povey got his first start at #10 for Utah, Tyler Wong got his first appearance in the reserves. Cali Martinez earned his second start at tighthead prop for Old Glory.
A good initiative by the Highlanders as they look at future players who might fill their ranks in years to come. It’s long range planning at its best. We’ve also updated the Highlanders news since our last post, appended below.
A reader sent in a story from the CW website, posted below. It mentions the 50th anniversary of mini-rugby this year with a shout out to Mick Eckardt. We took a deeper dive into the Daily Colonist archive and came up with some interesting news clippings about Mick, rugby in that era and mini-rugby.
In March 1954 the NZ All Blacks wrapped up a gruelling 36 match tour of the UK, Ireland, France and North America. By the time they reached BC they had played 31 matches and had 5 more to go, 3 of them in BC and 2 in California. They won the matches in BC handily, 39-3 against Victoria, 42-3 against UBC and 37-11 against the Mainland.
With only four matches this weekend it was the lowest number of Canadians playing this season, 8 starters, 7 in reserve for a total of 15 in action. There are four players who have been starters in all 5 weeks, Mason Flesch for Chicago and Dewald Kotze, Mitch Richardson and Nic Benn for Dallas.