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.
by Noah Bain
Kia Ora koutou, hello everyone, and thank you again for tuning in to BCRN, Article 6 of A Player’s Perspective. I cannot believe my blog writing career has made it this far and we are still going strong! I never saw myself doing something like this but look where we are now. To start us off here, there is TONS of test rugby to look forward to. At the time of writing, the Canada boys have not played yet, so good luck in these upcoming matches against Tonga. What an amazing opportunity ahead to test yourself against some extremely renowned players and for some, obtain their first cap. The recent Bledisloe Cup and Summer Test Series matches were a treat to watch along with most international sides naming their World Cup squads in the coming days. Lots of rugby happening and lots more to come with it being a World Cup year.
Hosted from July 30 to August 6 at the University of British Columbia, the women’s and men’s competition featured the BC Bears, Alberta Wolfpack, Ontario Blues, Rugby Quebec, and the Atlantic Rock/Atlantic Selects.
from BCRU
BC Rugby is delighted to announce the BC Bears U18 and U16 Boys and Girls squads that will represent the province at the 2023 Western Canadian Championships in Calgary, Alberta on August 3-6, 2023.
It’s not the result that would have been predicted pre-tournament. Scotland a Tier 1 rugby nation, a Six Nations member, were heavy favourites to win and get promoted back to the JWC U20 championships. It didn’t happen, they ended up finishing 3rd and USA 7th. Spain and Uruguay were the top two teams with Spain just edging Uruguay in the final.
[ed. match replay is here.]
from Rugby Canada
Canadas U23 Womens Rugby Team won their second Border Battle match against the USA on Sunday, following up Wednesdays 24-5 win with a dominating 55-14 victory.