Canada U20 Updates – May 2025

Canada U20 Face a Vancouver Island XV on Thursday, May 15th at 7pm at UVic in Preparation for Fiji Tournament

The Canada U20 team are departing Monday for the Oceania Rugby U20 Challenge in Fiji. This warm up match will give coach Christiaan Esterhuizen a chance to evaluate players in match conditions before they depart. They will be playing an Island XV team collected from the 5 Island Premier teams, JBAA, CW, Westshore, UVic and Pride.

Is it a Crimson Tide rep team, we’ve had conflicting reports, from “It’s not a  Tide team – they are wearing Tide kit.  The team was put together and we were asked about kit as an after thought” to “we are operating under the Crimson Tide name”. So Island XV or Crimson Tide, you decide.

The Island team features a mix of veterans and young players. Zephyr Melnyk, who I thought would be on the Canada radar when he played for the Pride, takes the #8 role. Taylor McGuire is a veteran player from NZ, Canada eligible now, he’s starting #10. Ian Anderton-Teasdale on the wing just started with UVic last season, he played on the Div 1 team, he was at the MacDowell Rugby Academy in Cowichan in his final high school year. Sion Griffiths at outside centre plays for UVic Prems and was with CW before that, last year he played for the Highlanders and subbed in for the last 20′ against the Canada XV and scored two tries. There are a few Pride (Rugby Canada Academy) players in the starting XV, Conor Williams at tighthead, Braden Bruce at blindside flanker and Jean-Louis Descoutte at fullback. They should give the Canada U20 team a good run.

The Canada U20 will play two squads as they have 32 players to run out, they have a 1st half and 2nd half squad. They should find some extra space in the last 20 as the Island team runs out of fresh legs. Some key positions to watch, at #10 will be Jonty Nicholas and Evan Davies. Jonty was a Shawnigan Lake player, competing with UBC but playing behind James Biss on the Premier squad. He played fullback for the BC U19 team in 2024. Evan Davies is from the Balmy Beach Club in Ontario. At #8 are Liam Kinghorn and Josh du Toit from UBC.

We’ll try to get there for some photos and to take some notes. We’re not sure if there’s a live stream yet, we’ll update the article if we find a link. The kick off is Thursday at 7pm at Wallace Field from the most recent information we have.

Island XV

1 Steve Stadnyk JBAA
2 Antonio Corbin CW
3 Conor Williams PRIDE
4 Asfi Saeed JBAA
5 Connor McKenzie CW
6 Braden Bruce PRIDE
7 Brendyn Beck JBAA
8 Zephyr Melnyk WESTSHORE
9 Spike Street JBAA
10 Taylor McGuire WESTSHORE
11 Ian Anderton-Teasdale UVIC
12 Malik James JBAA
13 Sion Griffiths UVIC
14 Drew Belbin WESTSHORE
15 Jean-Louis Descoutte PRIDE
16 Ezra Vai JBAA
17 Dakota Lachance JBAA
18 Josh Petrov UVIC
19 Ryder Heany-Corns UVIC
20 Daragh Carroll WESTSHORE
21 Anthony Carroll WESTSHORE
22 Theron Koyote UVIC
23 Angus Boyd-Porter – UVIC

Canada U20