Normally Friday is reserved for the BC Premier prediction and rosters article but since the BC Premier is still 2 weeks away and the schedule for any rugby in BC is still a week away, on a whim I’ve decided to take the time machine back 100 years ago to the day. What was happening in rugby on January 9th 1926, and on a larger scale what were the sports headlines?
Chloe Daniels is the latest Canadian 7s/XVs player to join the Premiership Women’s Rugby competition in England. She’ll be joining Holly Phillips and Pam Buisa in Bristol. Bristol are currently in 8th place in the standings, the league restarts on January 30th. Daniels was a member of the Canadian 7s Olympic team that won Silver in 2024. She went to Queen’s University to play in the 2024-25 USports season but picked up an ACL injury which put her into an extended period of recovery. She was awarded the Queen’s “Outstanding Performance of the Year” in April 2025 for exceptional performance on the international stage.
World Rugby’s latest video on YouTube is named The Greatest Drop Goals of All Time and as is no surprise it’s dominated by Tier 1 highlights, Dan Carter 2015, Zinzan Brooke 1995, Stephen Larkham 1999, Joel Stransky 1995, and at #1 Jonny Wilkinson 2003. NZ, Australia, South Africa and England, not surprising from a panel made up of 3 Aussies.
Rugby Canada has put out a request for Expressions of Interest from qualified coaches for several age-grade women’s 7s tournaments in 2026. The three tournaments mentioned are:
I had a chance to talk to Jamie Cudmore briefly on Saturday as he was waiting in the Toronto airport to head back to France after spending the holiday season in Newfoundland. He’s a coach at the Nissa Rugby Academy in Nice, France. He was eager to talk about the two Canadian players at the Academy, Joe Kaufmann and Eliot Marschall. Both were part of the Canada U18 camps in 2024 and Kaufmann was on the Canada U20 team in 2025. We were talking about pathways and Jamie spoke about the need to get Canadian players into Tier 1 academies at an earlier age, in this case specifically academies in France. Jamie has worked in France for many years as an elite player and coach and has a deep understanding of the French system with many contacts. I mused that it would be good to have a pathway from Canadian academies to French academies and Jamie indicated that when he was at the Pacific Pride he was working on making that happen.
RugbyPass, the World Rugby run media company, doesn’t cover Canadian rugby very often. They did an article on Jamie Cudmore in December 2024 lauding his attempt to revive Canadian men’s rugby, then immediately took it down when they discovered that Rugby Canada had hired Stephen Meehan as head coach. It was embarrassing for Rugby Canada and World Rugby. It seems they’ll stick to Canadian women’s rugby now which is much more stable under Kevin Rouet. They ran an article a few days ago, at the end of December 2025, which focused on Kevin Rouet and his unique position as head coach of Canadian women’s rugby and assistant coach at Saracens. The article is posted below but there are a couple of excerpts that deserve some more analysis from a Canadian perspective.
Sad news in the BC Rugby community to start the year. Long time Capilano Rugby Club member, Mark Abercrombie, passed away over the holiday period. He was an active Match Official, he most recently showed up in the October 4th match assignments. The messages of condolence from the Capilano Rugby Club and the BC Rugby Match Officials Society are posted below. Use the comments section below to share your own remembrance.
There was a lot of press in November around the McGill University decision to cut 25 sports programs. The McGill University women’s rugby program, which was one of the 25, started an awareness campaign and a fundraising campaign to get the program reinstated. They exceeded their initial goal of $35k and are currently aiming for $75k with $55k currently raised. It reminded me of a similar UBC action in 2014 which included a notice that the UBC women’s rugby program would be cut. The difference is that the UBC process seemed to go through a longer consultation process and at least a couple of reviews. The UBC women’s rugby program is still very much active and they’ve actually won the last two university championships.
So you want to play pro rugby, or maybe travel the world playing amateur or semi-pro rugby in different countries. You might be able to get connections through your club, or you could look up a Player Agent and see what they can provide. I don’t know any of the Agents well enough to recommend but there is one that reps some players in the BC Premier. You can check out their profile on Instagram where they post recent signing and placements. The company is ARM, America’s Rugby Management, and it’s run by David Jackson. He’s also Director of Rugby with the Atlantic Privateers, and has strong links to Nova Scotia rugby. He is originally from NZ and has links there as well. He recently was involved in getting Izzak Kelly and Sam Miller into the Portugal club Benfica. He also represents Brock Gallagher and Foster Dewitt.
It’s New Year’s Eve, time to celebrate the past year, you can view our four articles that highlight the past year, January to March, April to June, July to September and October to December. It’s also time to look at 2026. The national women’s XVs will be playing their Pacific Four series in April/May then a new WXV Global in the fall. England will be visiting in October for at least two matches. Canada didn’t host any Pacific Four matches in 2025 so are due to host some in 2026. The men’s national XVs will be part of the Nations Cup and that schedule is already known, 3 July matches at home and 3 away matches in Europe in November. As for 7s the women have already completed 2 tournaments in the 2025/26 season and have their next tournament in Singapore at the end of January. The men are in the SVNS 3 tournament in January, they have to finish top two to continue their season.