[ed. CanWest kicks off in BC on September 9th, looking forward to a great day at UVic’s Wallace Field. The Tide v Tsunami U20 boys at 11am, the women’s UVic v UBC at 1pm and the Vikes v Pride men’s game at 3pm.]
from CanWest
Coming off a third-straight conference championship, it’s no surprise the UBC Thunderbirds have once again been named favourites this season.
What a tour! A party of 42 travelling around the north island of NZ (Aotearoa) for fourteen days in four large vans and a car covering about 1400 km and over 18 hours of driving time. During that time they played six matches (3 for boys, 3 for girls), attended five Powiri (cultural welcoming ceremonies at Marae), attended four high level training sessions. They stayed in two Marae, two motels and were biletted with player families for two nights. They attended three professional matches in the evenings at Eden Park (FIFA semi-final), Mt Smart Stadium (up the wahs!), and Central Energy Trust Stadium (Go Turbos). There were trips to the NZ Rugby Museum, the Auckland Museum, hikes up Mount Maunganui and Maungakiekie.
A Message from the Toronto Arrows
It is with deep sadness that the Toronto Arrows organization joins the Webb Family in mourning the passing of our President and General Partner William “Bill” Webb after an illness he faced with courage and determination.
The Pacific Pride aka the Rugby Canada Development Academy kick off their fall season on Saturday against defending Premier men’s champions UBC. That game will be played at MacDonald Park, the JBAA home ground, and kickoff is 2:15pm. The match is part of the Coastal Cup which involves the Academy and the University sides UBC, UVic and TWU. The Coastal Cup schedule is here.
from BCRU
BC Rugby is proud to announce the election of Bob Strachan as new BC Rugby President, as well as the addition of three new members elected to its Board of Directors.
An unexpected announcement from UBC (posted below) indicates that Curry Hitchborn has stepped down from the head coach position at UBC. Several readers have been asking for more details but we don’t have any at this time.
As expected the women had an easy time of the North American Olympic qualifying as the USA had prequalified and weren’t at the tournament. Also as expected the men would have difficulty getting past USA. The men will have to win the repechage tournament in order to qualify.
The Thunder made the NZ media with a story of their tour and visit to the Orakei Marae. The link is here and includes video and photos of the visit.
Canada completed their two match series with Tonga, losing by an aggregate score of 64-15 over both matches. There’s frustration building among fans with Rugby Canada unwilling to make any changes to the coaching staff. Popular rugby journalists, like Squidge and Bryan Ray, are starting to comment on the Rugby Canada inaction.
A brief note to let readers know what’s going on. The server host decided to migrate the BCRN site to a “new and improved” server on last minute notice and in the process broke the site. The existing code didn’t work and I’ve been busy trying to rewrite some parts of the code to get everything working. You may have noticed BCRN down for a day or two. Making matters worse they migrated a week old database and we’re missing stories from August 5th to 11th. So if you thought there was a recent story but now can’t find it, that’s the reason. I’ll try to get that fixed over the next few weeks.