Hong Kong Rugby Union Terminates Elite Rugby Program for Men’s XVs – How You Can Help Fund the Canadian Elite Men’s XVs Academy

News that Hong Kong has terminated its Elite men’s XVs program due to the financial pressures of COVID should make Canadian rugby supporters take note and resolve to keep its Elite men’s XVs academy funded and running. The Pacific Pride, aka Rugby Canada Development Academy, operating under the coaching of Jamie Cudmore and Phil Mack is one of the few competitive advantages Canada have over their Americas rivals. In order to get to the 2023 World Cup, Canada’s first goal is to finish top 2 in the Americas, and in that context they are looking directly at USA and Uruguay.

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Uruguay Sources Publish New RWC 2023 Americas Qualifying Process: Rugby Canada Haven’t Acknowledged Change Yet

[ed. at the time of publication Rugby Canada haven’t acknowledged the change in qualifying process.]

A journalist from Uruguay, Ignacio Chans, creator of the Uruguay Rugby News twitter.com/RugbyNews_uy has broken the news about the 2023 RWC qualifying process for the Americas. The article, in Spanish, is here.

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National Coach Kingsley Jones Invites 36 Players to Three Week High Performance Camp in BC: 34 of 36 Have Played in the BC Premier League

[ed. when we listed the 34 players from the BC Premier, we only listed each player once starting with the universities, then the clubs. Some players have played for more than one BC Premier club, for example, UVic players Doug Fraser, Jake Ilnicki have also played for CW and Liam Murray and Conor Keys have also played for James Bay.]

The men’s national team will bring together 36 domestic based players for a high performance camp in Langford, BC from from November 9th to 29th.

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A Look at the Canadian Development Academy (Pacific Pride) Players in Camp

Below are a list of players attending the Academy sessions, we’ve added our notes on the players, feel free to use the comments section to add more information. The group a player is assigned to is sometimes dictated by work and school schedule.

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Pride Rebrands to Canadian Development Academy; Phil Mack Added to Coaching Staff; Match vs Arrows Planned

It’s normally a time we look forward to our first rugby matches of the BC season, not so this year with COVID, many of the BC clubs are rolling out their touch and flag rugby plans for the fall. Check with your local club rep for more details.

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U20 JWRT by the Numbers – Which Tier 2 Country is Best at Promoting U20 Players to Senior Caps, Also Canada U20 Team Lists 2012 to 2019

World Rugby came out with an interesting document, a summary of the U20 JWRT.

World Rugby Summary of U20 JWRT

We took a look at the most capped players (senior caps) from each JWRT. Only 2 Canadian players showed up on the list, Lucas Rumball (35 caps) who played in the 2014 and 2015 JWRT and Djustice Sears-Duru (52 caps) who played in the 2013 JWRT. Counting up the players from other countries who topped the list, Portugal had 11 players, Uruguay had 7 players, Georgia had 6 players, Namibia had 4 players, Russia had 3 players.

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Chat with Jeff Williams U20 Coach – JWRT in Spain Cancelled This Year

We had a chance to record a candid conversation between two top Canadian coaches this week at Shawnigan Lake. We were there shooting some skills videos with Gilbert Canada and Canada 7s star Kayla Moleschi which will be shared at a later date.

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Kingsley Jones Updates Neil Davidson on Status of National Men’s Programs

from Canadian Press

TORONTO — With July internationals already called off due to the global pandemic and the likely cancellation of the Americas Rugby Championship later this summer, Canada’s top rugby players may not see action until October at the earliest.

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Evan Olmstead Signs with Biarritz Olympique

from Canadian Press

TORONTO — Canadian rugby international Evan Olmstead has signed a new contract with Biarritz Olympique of the French second division.

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