Warren Gatland wants his coaching mate, Robert Howley, back in the Wales fold. His comments were captured in the Guardian article linked below. He basically wants Howley forgiven but apparently the WRU blocked the move.
The most interesting rugby story to come out of the weekend was the move of Eddie Jones to Australia as coach, as Dave Rennie got the sack in Australia. Jones had been England’s coach but was sacked and there was speculation around his final destination, it’s now confirmed to be Australia. Here are some of the articles on the subject from around the rugby world.
USA Rugby announced on January 5th the appointment of two interim coaches while their high performance review continues. Neither the men’s or women’s XVs team met expectations so the contracts of the head coaches were not renewed and a high performance review initiated.
Local rugby news is slow in the new year, so let’s take a look at what’s grabbing the headlines elsewhere.
What’s on your wish list for Canadian rugby this year? This is ours.
2022, what to make of it from a BC and Canadian rugby perspective? Obviously the top story is the women’s World Cup, Canada finished 4th, maybe a little disappointing for the world #3 team but they represented well, the tournament gained a lot of media coverage and progressed women’s rugby worldwide. Sophie de Goede probably put herself at the top of the list for most media-recognizable rugby player in Canada now, male or female.
[ed. comments below]
I got on this thread about rugby fitness after watching the Japan SDS team win the World School 7s tournament in NZ. The Japan team defeated the highly favoured Australia and NZ girls teams to win the tournament. I watched a number of games on both the boys and girls side and one thing that jumped out at me was the gap in fitness among teams. Of course fitness alone won’t win 7s matches, but without it, winning is difficult. I contacted a number of coaches who watched the tournament to get their thoughts around the Japan win. One noted, “good skills and the fitness that allows them to use them, a desire to work for each other, plus a couple of strong orchestrators”. Another noted, “if you want to simplify why Japanese teams do this, it all comes down to 2 things, discipline and respect”.
There have been a spate of coaching changes made in the rugby world recently. Last week Eddie Jones was sacked by England and Gary Gold “stepped down” from the USA job, the week started with Wales parting company with Wayne Pivac. They were all related to on field performance of the teams involved, England and Wales were not happy with their team performances leading into a World Cup year. The USA situation was more relatable to Canada, the coach didn’t make the Rugby World Cup, therefore he had to go, there were performance expectations.
Rugby Netherlands Confirms Canada Matches
Rugby Netherlands have confirmed their hosting of Canada on November 12th and also their hosting of the Canada v Namibia match on November 19th. Namibia have also confirmed their match with Canada. Rugby Canada have not released any information yet.
Shane O’Leary to Arrows
The Toronto Arrows announced the signing of Shane O’Leary. O’Leary had been playing rugby at Rouen in the Pro D2 which is the second level of French rugby. He played for Canada U20 in 2013 and helped them to a second place finish behind Italy at the JWRT. We posted an article on him in 2014 as he was joining Connacht and did an interview in May 2013 when he was preparing for the JWRT and was in Langford. Those articles are here.