2021 was not a good year for Canadian rugby, there’s little doubt about that. The women’s 7s program imploded, shrapnel from that implosion took out a couple of national coaches who were expected to lead Canada forward, the men’s XVs failed to make the World Cup for the first time in its history. COVID crushed everything around it, in particular the national U20 programs and local club rugby. It wasn’t a good year at all.
The Vancouver Wave won the inaugural Coastal Cup over the Pacific Pride in November. The BC clubs had an abbreviated fall season with hopes the spring would bring back some return to normalcy. It’s still wait and see on that front as even though the schedule was announced to start January 22nd there’s still uncertainty around the BC Health Authority policies in the new year.
September started well with Canada taking a +13 lead over USA in the World Cup qualifier in St. John’s. Unfortunately a week later Canada would lose 38-16 to USA to lose the series. They would play Chile next.
The MLR wrapped up with LA winning the title. Three Canadians were selected on the MLR All-Star team for the season, Lucas Rumball and Ben LeSage from Toronto and DTH from LA.
[ed. previous articles are here: January, February, March, April]
As spring and summer rolled across the Canadian landscape there was some optimism that boots would be on the field soon. In BC that would mean outdoor non-contact rugby could begin. There were some high-performance matches involving the Pacific Pride and the Canada 7s team as they looked to remain sharp ahead of the Olympics. Jamie Cudmore was still coach of the Pride.
With no local rugby due to COVID in April 2021 the rugby headlines were focused on MLR, the Olympics and the ongoing dispute between the women’s 7s team, head coach John Tait and Rugby Canada. That dispute was just reaching a crescendo with the women launching a powerful PR campaign on social media and through their media contacts, explaining their grievance. An independant investigator would be assigned to write a report. We have gotten hold of a copy of the report and will go into more details in the coming weeks as to its findings.
We ran 18 stories in March 2021. One of the highlights was the appointment of Jeff Chan as CEO of the Canadian Rugby Foundation. The Foundation just announced (Dec 22nd) a donation in the amount of $11.65 million from Fletchers Field Limited (FFL). The Fletchers Fields rugby facility has been sold to the City of Markham but will continue to be used for rugby until October 2024. The member clubs have each setup a fund at the Foundation that will ultimately be used to help each club get reestablished in new facilities. The clubs are Aurora Barbarians, Markham Irish, Toronto Nomads, Toronto Saracens and Toronto Scottish.
We only ran 10 stories in February 2021 but one of them would impact Canadian rugby like no other. That of course was the women’s 7s players revolt against their coach John Tait. We still don’t know all the details, what were the complaints specifically, who was the instigator, were the internal processes followed? What we do know is Rugby Canada issued a vague statement, John Tait was removed as coach and Australian Mick Byrne named as interim coach. The independent investigator later concluded there was no abuse or bullying according to existing policy. The damage was done and the dominoes would start falling.
We ran 16 stories in January 2021, the full list and links are below but here are some of the highlights.
January in 2021 was very much wrapped up in the COVID issues, rugby wasn’t being played in BC but we were all hoping the situation would change to permit it. The situation didn’t change and the 2021 spring season was scrubbed.
MLR
The MLR season starts February 5th, the schedule is here.. Seattle will host Toronto on Sunday the 6th and the following Friday, February 11th, Toronto will host the defending champion LA Giltinis at Starlight Stadium in Langford.