On a very sunny and warm, (18 degrees), November afternoon at Jericho two evenly matched teams went at it hard with the result in the balance until the final whistle. While Burnaby picked up two bonus points, the Ravens escaped with the win after two last minute saving tackles denied Burnaby a shot at a tied game.
Thanks to Peter Muirhead who put together these league tables for the weekend ending Nov 5th.
Tables ordered by points per game
I met Barry Kelly, one of Lunk’s friends and one of the initial investors in ScrumMaster, over a pint and we talked about the early days of ScrumMaster. It all started with the merger of UVic Vikes Old Boys, aka Valhallians, and the club adjacent to UVic, Velox, around 1987. They merged as the Velox Valhallians. Kevin Wirachowski aka Lunk was from UVic and Barry was from Velox. As the ScrumMaster records state, Lunk began tinkering with scrum machines in 1986 but didn’t build his first one until 1991, that one went to Velox. It was a prototype machine, he built a second prototype and that went to Cowichan, where Tony Medina, the other investor was a member.
The Laval Rouge et Or successfully defended their Canadian title, Sunday afternoon, by defeating the Victoria Vikes 32-13 in the championship game of the 2023 U SPORTS Women’s Rugby Championship, held in Quebec City.
Week 4 of the BC Premier kicked off this weekend. Next weekend is Remembrance Day so Week 5 will be November 18th. There were three undefeated sides going into Week 4, Meraloma, Burnaby and the Pacific Pride.
Canada’s men’s team reversed an earlier loss to USA in the pool round to win the Bronze medal match 19-17. Argentina were the class of the tournament and went undefeated winning Gold. Chile were the surprising Silver medal winner as they defeated USA in the semi-finals. The USA men sent a development side that only had 2 players from their team that won the Olympic qualifier in August.
Canada finished 2nd in the WXV 1 behind England but ahead of Australia, France, NZ and Wales. The match report, final standings table and video highlight are posted below.
Bryan Kelly is well known in the BC Rugby community. He was a talented #10 in the JBAA Premier Reserve team. He went on to become the Communications Manager for Rugby Canada in 2012 a post he held for 7 years. He excelled in that position and from this Editor’s perspective, he was the best Communications Manager that Rugby Canada have had since Ian Kennedy in the 90s.
Thanks to Peter Muirhead who put together these league tables for the weekend ending October 29th.
The 2023 Rugby World Cup isn’t even cold and World Rugby are on to the next with a new rebranding and logo for 2025 England, the women’s Rugby World Cup. See their media release below.