A few stories of interest as we wait for the men’s and women’s national team rosters to be announced on Thursday/Friday. As a reminder it’s Canada v Japan men at 1am PT on TSN and Canada v Wales women at 4am PT. Hopefully TSN will have both matches in their Games on Demand archive on Saturday.
A few news items for Thursday, the Thunder Indigenous Rugby program is in NZ, playing their final match in Wellington as this goes to press. They notched up their first wins in NZ earlier in the week, so congrats to them. The Junior PanAm 7s kick off on Saturday for the U20 women and World Rugby is introducing a new concussion mouthguard for the Women’s Rugby World Cup, details and links below.
A few news items from midweek, MLR purportedly down to 8 teams with Miami the latest casualty. The BC U17 camp is on and the first games played, the women defeated Alberta and the men lost a game to a UK touring team. The Tragically Hip have jumped on the Women’s World Cup fundraising drive with a limited edition T-Shirt with proceeds to the women’s team.
I analyzed the July rankings for Canadian men and women XVs programs from 2004 to 2025. It tells a tale of two programs.
The exact question from the reader, in the comments section, was: I remember being young and reading about rugby matches between BC Bears and Ontario Blues and Atlantic Rock. I think there was a team in the Prairies too. Do these teams still exist? What happened to them? Weren’t they supposed to be the step below the national team; a feeder for the national team?
I came across this article through Karl Fix who is planning on taking a U19 team down to Argentina in 2026 and his contact there is Les Cusworth. From a Canadian perspective we’re always looking for lessons that can be learned and applied to make our rugby better, specifically our men’s XVs program, which has hit a low patch. So what is Argentina doing right and what might be relevant in a BC and Canadian context? As a side note I’ll have an opportunity to have a chat with Les Cusworth, so if readers have additional questions they would like me to ask, mention them in the comments or email editor@bcrugbynews.com
A couple of stories from across the world involving Canadian rugby players. Tyler Duguid who plays for Montpellier in the Top 14 has been selected for the France XV vs England XV. It’s unclear whether this is the official France “A” team which would capture Tyler for France and eliminate him from potential Canada selection down the road or if this is just a France XV which doesn’t officially capture him for France. Either way the chances of him playing for Canada now seem very slim. The match will be streamed on rugbypass.tv on Saturday.
A couple of news stories today, maybe more to add later today. Bayside are looking for a men’s head coach for next season, starting in August. See the ad below, their Insta is @Bayside_RFC
I saw Tyson Beukeboom had written an article a couple of days ago for the World Rugby online portal, RugbyPass. It’s a quiet Monday rugby-wise, I had just returned to the office from a weekend visiting my daughter and grand-daughters so this seemed like a good way to start the week.
Thunder Rugby was a program started in 2013 to promote the sport of rugby to Indigenous youth, to give youth the opportunity to experience west coast Indigenous culture and to experience rugby and Indigenous culture world wide through rugby tours.