We had been using a Twitter feed for clubs on our home page, if your club was on our BCRN club list then you could tweet something out and it would show up on the BCRN home page. Well that, like many things on Twitter lately, stopped working this week.
There’s been some negative reaction to the rugby giants colluding together to have their own party during the summer and fall test windows. The Planet Rugby article calls it the “death of Tier 2 rugby”, Americas Rugby News states, “Changes are set to hit International Rugby like a hurricane.”
Tonga?
RNZ, Radio New Zealand, ran a story on Tongan rugby that states they’ll play a 2 game series against Canada after the Pacific Nations Cup and before leaving for the World Cup in France. Tonga play their final PNC match August 5th in Samoa, that leaves 3 weekends of pre-World Cup action remaining, August 12, 19, 26, to fit in a 2 game series. There’s been no corroboration from Rugby Canada or World Rugby yet.
BC Boys High School Updates
Shawnigan won the Island final over Oak Bay 36-10, St. George’s defeated Carson Graham in the Mainland final 13-5. It’s likely those two teams will be top seeds in the Provincials coming up May 31st to June 3rd. Elgin Park defeated Lord Tweedsmuir 41-7 in the South Fraser championship.
We ran a survey on May 1st about an MLR team in BC, we had 236 respondents and here are the results. You’ll notice a permanent link in the right column on the home page as we’ll continue to monitor survey results during the year and provide updates, the next update will come when we reach 500 entries. We’ll also do a draw at the end of each month for a Gilbert TR4000 rugby ball.
Even though there’s nothing official, which isn’t surprising from Rugby Canada, this is the latest info we have on what’s happening at HQ.
We’re going to run a survey to monitor interest in having an MLR team in BC. We’ll leave the survey link on the home page so people can find it easily and we’ll collect data over time. Every month we’ll do a draw for a Gilbert TR4000 rugby ball, the draw will be done from survey respondents. We’ll notify the winner by email.
There’s no local rugby in BC this weekend as the leagues take the Easter Break, the playoffs start next weekend but there are BC and Canadian players in action around the globe.
Patrick Johnston wrote an article in the Province last week, Vancouver group rallies to take another look at pro rugby.
My editorial view is, an MLR team in BC would be good but it’s not going to be the saviour of Canadian rugby, if there’s money to be spent there are other options.
Rugby 7s Funding by Own the Podium
In the Tokyo quinquennial the women’s rugby 7s program and Rugby Canada received $10,487,500 in funding from Own the Podium. This was due to the hard work put in by the 2016 Olympic team who won Bronze under the coaching of John Tait. Under the Paris triennial they are no longer listed under Summer Sport Funding, they’ve been moved to the Team Sport Strategy category with the note, “team sports considered to be medal potential for 2024 are included under the Summer Sport Funding category”. They are now listed alongside the men’s program. They’ll receive $1,050,000 in funding for 2022-23. The men’s program will receive $575,000, an improvement over the $130,000 they received in the Tokyo quinquennial.