[ed. This schedule does not include the Coastal Cup, the high level regional men’s competition starting September 25th.]
The Age-Grade Fall season will properly get underway at the Kamloops 7s over the Thanksgiving weekend and build to the Regional Championships, while Senior Club leagues will start October 16 and run for eight weeks ahead of a fully-competitive Spring season.
There are two main points of interest to rugby clubs in BC in the attached BCRU news article.
The PHO (Provincial Health Officer) announced today a 4 step plan to restart the province. Step 1 commences May 25th and in terms of sport and exercise states: “Outdoor games and practices for both adults and youth group/team sports allowed”.
from BCRU
January 8, 2021 (Vancouver, BC) Yesterday afternoon, Dr. Bonnie Henry announced the extension of the current Public Health Order through to Friday, February 5, 2021, at midnight. This includes the restrictions that are in place for sport, which includes reduced participant numbers and 3 metres physical distancing maintained at all times. The Public Health Order, which was most recently updated on December 24, 2020, can be viewed here.
Most rugby people in BC will have had at least a few visits to Crush Crescent. Whether at the junior level, senior level or old boys, it was always a physical game when Langley were hosting.
The BCRU sent out a final 2020 missive on the 18th of December and the news isn’t great. They’re basically predicting a post Spring-break time frame for any type of contact rugby. The exact wording is as follows: “Phase 4 Return to Rugby activities (i.e. inter-club competition, modified contact) unfortunately is further away than we had hoped… We remain hopeful that some sort of competition will be possible after Spring-break, at the very least, ‘end of season’ regional tournaments.”
The BCRU sent letters out to clubs today advising them that all sanctioned in-person rugby activity will be suspended until January 3rd 2021.
BC Rugby (BCRU) have revisited their interpretation of the viaSport “Progressively Loosen” phase and have now projected a “low-contact” version of rugby for January 2021. There’s no change to the “non-contact” club mandate for the rest of 2020.
Bayside RFC in South Surrey is back on the pitch.
Bayside were one of the first rugby clubs to complete the required phase 2 and 3 sanctioning process and have recently conducted a 2 day youth rugby training camp where nearly 40 kids eagerly signed up for the socially distanced rugby skills camp.
ViaSport, the provincial authority on Return to Sport protocol, announced the “Progressively Loosen” stage will start August 24th. “As of August 24, sport activities should adhere to the Progressively Loosen stage of the Sport Activity Chart.”