New England Free Jacks won the 2023 MLR title defeating San Diego Legion 25-24. There were 6 Canadians in the match, Andrew Quattrin, Conor Keys and Ben Lesage starting for New England, with Cole Keith and Spencer Jones on the bench. Michael Smith was on the bench for San Diego. New England had the largest number of Canadians on a USA based team roster, with 11 players used during the season.
Canada go 1-1 in the Pacific Four series and with one round left are in a good position to finish top 3 and advance to the Tier One WXV. The USA look destined to be relegated to Tier 2 as they were pummelled by Australia today, 58-17, they’ll have to defeat the Black Ferns to have any chance of remaining in Tier 1. Canada fill face Australia in the final round of the series on Friday.
We had been using a Twitter feed for clubs on our home page, if your club was on our BCRN club list then you could tweet something out and it would show up on the BCRN home page. Well that, like many things on Twitter lately, stopped working this week.
from Bayside Rugby
Can you please post our upcoming Annual Bayside Sharks Summer 7s for August 12, 2023. Registration is now open and payment can be sent to treasurer@baysiderfc.com and any enquiries to myself, mattfalkner3@gmail.com
Coach Kevin Rouet named his 30 players for the upcoming matches against NZ and Australia. He had to drop 10 players from his long list. He dropped 7 forwards and 3 backs, the total now stands at 17 forwards and 13 backs.
There’s been some negative reaction to the rugby giants colluding together to have their own party during the summer and fall test windows. The Planet Rugby article calls it the “death of Tier 2 rugby”, Americas Rugby News states, “Changes are set to hit International Rugby like a hurricane.”
by Noah Bain
Kia ora and thanks for tuning into BCRN! My name is Noah Bain, in case youre new here, and this is my 4th article documenting my experience as a Canadian playing rugby for Spotswood United in New Plymouth, Taranaki, New Zealand. I wish I had some good news in regards to us getting a win, following up on my last post, but sadly, I do not. The Chiefs lost to the Crusaders, and Spotty lost again. It has been a challenging season mixed with growth and rewards, as I continue to keep learning much about myself and about this wonderful game.
Van City Rugby Academy are running two rugby camps this summer.
The coaching staff includes Christiaan Esterhuizen, Mike Hall and Aaron Takel.
The age group is 5-13 years.
The Loonies women’s team, stacked with Canadian talent, and coached by Robin MacDowell won the Western kickoff tournament on Saturday. The standings count both the men’s and women’s results, the Loonies men came 3rd but their combined results put the Loonies at the top of the standings with 16 points.
The Toronto Arrows Academy took home the Coast to Coast Cup for 2023 with some talented backline play, and some weak outside defending from the home team. The forwards advantage the Atlantic Selects had in the first half disappeared when the subs came on in the second half. It was the play of the outside backs for Toronto that won them the match. Stanislas Blazkowski, the fullback from the Arrows Academy, was selected Man of the Match. Stan is from Marseille, France but moved to Montreal when he was young with his family. He went back to France to play for the Racing Academy and then returned to Canada to play with the Concordia Stingers. I have a feeling we’ll be hearing more of him in the future.