Canada were relentless on attack and committed on defence as they pummelled host Australia 45-7.
Scorers: McKinley Hunt (1T), Karen Paquin (1T), Laetitia Royer (1T), Krissy Scurfield (1T), Alex Tessier (1T), Fabiola Forteza (1T), Julia Schell (1T, 5C)
Canada drew with NZ 27-27 in an exciting match that saw NZ tie the match at the final whistle. The Canadian Press match report is posted below as well as the full match video courtesy of the NZRugbyVidz2027 account on YouTube. Canada retain their #2 ranking with the draw and the winner of the Pacific Four series could come down to points differential between Canada and NZ with Canada playing Australia and NZ facing USA on Friday.
Update: Ireland won the second match 32-14. Scoring for Canada were Adia Pye (1T), Rachel Cullum (1T), Brooke Roddham (2C). Ireland had added a number of players for the 2nd match including four 7s players, and a few of the senior Ireland squad.
Coach Dean Murten has made minor changes to the roster for the 2nd match versus Ireland which kicks off at 5:00am PT on May 17th. Canada won the 1st match 26-15.
I saw Tyson Beukeboom had written an article a couple of days ago for the World Rugby online portal, RugbyPass. It’s a quiet Monday rugby-wise, I had just returned to the office from a weekend visiting my daughter and grand-daughters so this seemed like a good way to start the week.
The women’s Island Blue vs Mainland Gold series starts later this month with the ID sessions starting May 10th. The national team coach, Kevin Rouet, stated “the BC Blue vs Gold Series is the best standard of Rugby we can provide to senior female athletes in BC. These games are an important part of the pathway for athletes to access the Canadian National Senior Women’s program or Canada Select team. I am very excited to see athletes playing in a multi-game format and showing consistency in performance in these high-standard games.”
It was a familiar story for the women’s XVs, rely on the forwards to come through in the crunch. Canada and USA were tied at 14-14 in the second half with sloppy backline play by Canada contributing to both USA tries. The forwards came through at the 71′ mark with a maul try to go ahead and the backline finally clicked at the 77′ mark to put the game out of reach.
The Canadian women’s XVs team will be busy this spring and summer as they prepare for the World Cup in August. They’ve added Ireland as part of the build up, with a note in their news release, “additional match announcements for Canada’s Women’s Rugby Team will be made shortly.”.
There’s not a lot of published data on the number of women’s caps so we reached out to Liz Montroy, the Rugby Canada Communications Manager, and she sent this data. It will be updated with more information, such as match/date of first cap at a later date, but this is a good start.
World Rugby announced the pools for the women’s Rugby World Cup in 2025. Canada, ranked #2, will face Scotland, Wales and Fiji in the pool round. The top two teams in each pool advance to the quarter-finals.
Canada didn’t win but it was a good effort by Canada that was just hampered by key handling errors at critical times. It was a 2 point match until the final whistle when England scored their final try.