There were 31 Canadians in action in the MLR this week, 17 starters and 14 reserves. San Diego displaced Seattle at the top of the Western Conference while New England continue to lead the Eastern Conference.
Canada finished 14th in the tournament, losing the 13th place match to USA. Japan had a good tournament, gaining 5 series points, Canada picked up 2 points. Japan closed the gap on the automatic relegation position to 8 points. If Japan made the Cup round in Toulouse and Canada had one of their 1 point tournaments, they’ve had 2 so far this year, Japan could make the relegation tournament and send Canada to automatic relegation. Based on tournament results so far it’s unlikely, Japan are in a pool with Samoa, Australia and Ireland in Toulouse.
There’s no local rugby in BC this weekend as the leagues take the Easter Break, the playoffs start next weekend but there are BC and Canadian players in action around the globe.
from Capilano Rugby
Capilano hosted 5 games today. It was supposed to be rainy but the weather turned out to be beautiful. Perhaps a bit chilly but great Rugby weather. The top pitch had two games played, a high school game between West Vancouver and Carson Graham. Carson won 17-0 but it was a well played contest. Capilanos hope to make this an annual event. Caps awarded two rugby shirts to a player of the match from each side. West Vans Taiki Orito and Drew from Carson Graham were selected and awarded the shirts by Caps Neil Courtney.
There were two new Canadian players added to the MLR list as D’Shawn Bowen and Dawson Fatoric moved from the Pacific Pride/7s program to the Toronto Arrows. Also we added Will Grant who is a Canada eligible scrum half playing for Toronto. That brings the total number of Canadian players who are allocated to MLR teams to 63, this week 38 players got on the rosters with 20 getting the start. The spreadsheet below shows the stats up to Week 7.
The men fell further off the pace in trying to avoid the relegation tournament. With two tournaments left, Singapore next week and Toulouse in May, it’s looking unlikely that Canada will make up the 18 points on Spain and 17 points on Uruguay to contest for the 11th spot and exemption from the relegation tournament in London. Spain made the quarter-final in Hong Kong which gave them 10 series points and allowed them to pass Uruguay who garnered 5 series points. Canada earned 2 series points in Hong Kong. Canada are in a pool with Fiji, Spain and Samoa in Singapore so they’ll have a chance to go head to head against Spain in that tournament.
by Peter MacDonald
On a crisp, sunny, early spring day at Brockton Oval the Ravens and the Rowers played out the string but still put on an entertaining, fun game for the players and fans alike. The Ravens remained undefeated (on the field) while the Rowers showed their class in the set scrum and in serious flashes in the backs.
The women’s XVs team continues to impress under the coaching of Kevin Rouet and the player leadership of Sophie de Goede. The performance of the team challenges some standard beliefs.
[ed. rosters posted in format last week/this week]
It took us a while this week to get the scores out, the BCRU system had JBAA defeating CW but in fact it was CW with the win. The BCRU system doesn’t have a central person responsible for scores but relies on refs entering the scores post match and there have been a few data entry errors lately. We’ve verified most of these scores with a secondary source. We’re also assuming the BCRU table accurately calculated bonus points from today’s results. UPDATE: Our assumption was apparently wrong, the BCRU table is incorrect, CW didn’t get a bonus point in their win which changes the playoff picture, we’ve revised our article accordingly.
[ed. note that times and locations based on BCRU fixtures page at time of writing.]
Our normal prediction article with rosters and predictions for the men’s Premier will come out tomorrow as usual but we thought we’d take a look at the playoff picture for the men’s Div 1 and women’s Premier today.