We reflect on the first 3 months of 2023, from January to March, selecting 20 stories that highlighted what was happening in local, national and international rugby news from a Canadian west coast perspective.
Wishing all our readers a relaxing and joyful holiday season. We’ll do a year end review after Xmas and get into the highlights of the year. For now here are some resources for watching rugby and some past stories that you might find interesting.
File this story under the category, irksome. Rob Howley gets banned from rugby in 2019 for betting on rugby games that included Wales where he was a coach. As the BBC article calls it, “betting breaches”. His ban was 18 months, reduced to 9 months. He was persona non grata in the rugby world, so where did he find work, Canada, and who helped him land the job, according to BBC, Kingsley Jones.
The theme of today’s post is men’s high-performance XVs across Canada, touching on the Highlanders in BC, Queen’s in Ontario and the Privateers in Atlantic Canada.
The BC Rugby leagues have shut down for the winter break but there is rugby to watch both locally and online this weekend. The 7s Series kicks off in Dubai, the Mexico 7s U19 tournament starts on Saturday, locally there’s the Pacific Pride vs Seattle at Starlight Stadium on Saturday and on Sunday the Provincial Youth Club Championships at UBC.
MLR have shown a bit about the 2024 season but haven’t released the schedule yet. There are a lot of questions around the U20 program and the JWRT tournament that haven’t been answered yet. There’s word that the U18 program is on the chopping block. MacDowell Rugby announce the girls team heading to the Mexico 7s.
A few items to cover Monday morning of interest to BC and Canadian rugby fans. MLR, when is the schedule coming out? The USA searching for a new CEO. Canadians playing in the top European league. The BCRN archives slowly come back online and we’ve featured some stories from Zaruba, Moylett, Bain and Marshall, plus the 2022-23 BC Premier articles are back online
I met Barry Kelly, one of Lunk’s friends and one of the initial investors in ScrumMaster, over a pint and we talked about the early days of ScrumMaster. It all started with the merger of UVic Vikes Old Boys, aka Valhallians, and the club adjacent to UVic, Velox, around 1987. They merged as the Velox Valhallians. Kevin Wirachowski aka Lunk was from UVic and Barry was from Velox. As the ScrumMaster records state, Lunk began tinkering with scrum machines in 1986 but didn’t build his first one until 1991, that one went to Velox. It was a prototype machine, he built a second prototype and that went to Cowichan, where Tony Medina, the other investor was a member.
[editor’s comments below]
We’re moving the site Sunday night, expect a slightly new look on Monday morning.
There are a variety of rugby topics coming across the Editor’s desk in the last couple of days. We’ll start with something local.
Collegiate Webinar
Adam Roberts runs an annual Collegiate Rugby Webinar where he puts together rugby athletes in the grade 10 to 12 age group (and their families) with university rugby programs. He also brings in a College Rugby Advisory consultant to explain the landscape. The poster below has the details, he’s adding more university programs but currently UBC, UVic, TWU, UBCO, Western Washington, Central Washington, Guelph, UPEI are signed up.