This is a transition year for both the men’s and women’s programs as new players are tested out on the international circuit. The danger for Canada is that if the quality is too low they could be relegated from the series the following year.
The 2021 World 7s Series was just two tournaments, Vancouver and Edmonton, but it goes in the record books and Canada finished 4th overall behind South Africa, Great Britain and Kenya and ahead of the USA in 5th. The full standings are on the World Rugby website.
South Africa as expected won the tournament, Kenya were 2nd, GB 3rd, Ireland 4th, USA 5th, Canada 6th, Hong Kong 7th, Spain 8th, Germany 9th, Jamaica 10th, Chile 11th and Mexico 12th.
France and Japan have dropped out of the Vancouver 7s and presumably out of the Edmonton 7s. New teams Mexico, Jamaica and Hong Kong have been added.
The men’s side of the Olympic 7s wrapped up today with Fiji repeating as Gold medalists, defeating NZ in the final. Argentina, the surprise team of the tournament, won Bronze defeating Great Britain.
Congratulations to Nate on being selected to share the flag bearing duties for Canada at the Olympics.
The pools were announced for the Olympic 7s, July 26-31 2021.
As expected it’s going to be a tougher journey for the men to make the QF than for the women. There are 12 teams in each competition, 8 make the quarter-finals. The top two finishers in each of the 3 pools plus the 2 best 3rd place finishers will go through.
Canada announced their men’s and women’s teams for the Olympics in July. Thirteen players are listed per team, with 12 selected for match day and 1 alternate. There’s no mention of who the non-playing alternate is on each squad. The USA women announced their roster earlier this month and identified an alternate plus two travelling reserves for a 15 player squad. The USA men haven’t announced their squad yet.
As part of the process to get the Canada 7s team some game time prior to the Olympics, they squared off against the national rugby academy, the Pacific Pride, on 3 consecutive weekends. This was the final weekend of action.
The Canada 7s boys were tuning up for the Olympics with some matches vs the Pacific Pride National Academy. We posted 31 photos on our backup site nationalrugbynews.com