Rugby Canada have named 14 players to travel to Australia to prepare for the Perth 7s. The team are travelling there this weekend, 2 weeks ahead of the tournament for preparation. The silver medal won at the last Olympics has no doubt given the program the extra funds to travel early and with an extra player. The final roster will be named the week of the tournament.
The Canadian women will be in a pool with USA, Great Britain and Fiji in Perth. USA sit in 4th place with a 2nd place finish in Cape Town, GB are in 5th place, Canada in 7th place and Fiji in 11th place. The top 8 teams avoid the relegation tournament in LA and compete for the title. There are 3 more tournaments after Perth and before LA, they’re Vancouver, Hong Kong and Singapore.
It’s a big improvement for Canada, going from 8th in Dubai to 5th in Cape Town. Along the way they defeated Great Britain 27-12 and Japan 22-7. Japan defeated Canada twice in Dubai, so the Cape Town result shows the growth the team have had in between tournaments. The next challenge will be Perth in January, 24-26.
Canada women lost both of their Day 2 matches, first to Australia in the quarter-finals and then to Japan in the 7th/8th playoff match. The loss to Australia was decisive 39-0, the loss to Japan was an improvement over their opening 40-5 pool loss to Japan, this time it was 24-22 with two late Canada tries closing the gap.
The question of whether Canada would still host the 7s Series in 2025, now that the men’s team are no longer part of the core group, has been answered. Yes, Vancouver will be the 4th stop on the 2025 series.
It wasn’t expected but Canada upset #2 seed Australia, 21-12, to advance to the Gold medal match. Earlier in the quarter-finals they eliminated #3 France who were expected to medal as hosts. Canada couldn’t pull off one more miracle but gave #1 seed NZ a tough match only losing 19-12 to win Silver.
Canada have named their 13 athletes for Rugby 7s at the Olympics. Only the women’s team are representing, the men didn’t qualify. One of the big stories not mentioned in the official release is that Sophie de Goede tore her ACL in training and the injury took her out of the selection pool. On the good news front Carissa Norsten has recovered from her injury and was selected for the team.
Canada looked tired coming out on Day 3 after a big Day 2, knocking off Australia and France. They narrowly got by Spain in the semi-final and lost to Japan in the final as errors crept into their game.
It was a sad day for the men’s 7s program as they lost to Spain 22-14 in the promotion/relegation game and they are out of the series for next year. We’ll cover the ramifications of that in an editorial during the week. Remaining on the series next year are Spain, Uruguay, USA and Kenya. The men now focus on the Olympic qualifier later this month.
NZ claimed the double in Singapore winning both men’s and women’s tournaments, Argentina were name league winners on the men’s side with most points accumulated over the season, NZ were league winners on the women’s side. The Canadian women finished 7th with a 17-5 win over Great Britain, the men finished 12th for their 5th tournament in a row, losing to Samoa 17-12.