Editorial: Why The Disparity Between Men’s (#22) and Women’s (#2) Rugby in Canada
I was browsing on X (formerly Twitter) and saw a post from an account called Tier 2 which asked a valid question, “Any good theories for why ???? Canada women (ranked 2nd in 15s & Olympic silver in 7s) currently such contrast to woeful state of the men’s sides? Even accounting for much shallower field on women’s side to be ranked 2nd with no Tier 1 money very impressive.”
There were a number of answers, some from Canadian readers, some from offshore readers, here are a few examples.
A1: Coaching structure is far better and the way they keep introducing young players is at the highest level. Tough, physical with a totally abundance of skill. Tough combination to beat.
Do you think it might have something to do with the proportion of players playing professionally at the highest level. 9/10 of the women’s team plays in the English premiership against some of the best players in the world weekly. The men’s program has 0/10 playing high level.
True, but then you still need to develop players talented enough to win contracts in those leagues in the first place (and needs the league to be willing to sign talent from overseas as well).
A2: Canada have, for a while, integrated 7s and 15s squads better than anyone. Definitely some crossover skills outside the tight 5.
A3: North America has much more funding for women’s than men’s due to Title 9 in the US, and equivalent laws in Canada. Male funding goes to football, ice hockey, etc. equal funding has to be spent on females and rugby gets a decent chunk
A4: Kingsley Jones
A5: Gender equality in 21st century. Money and attention pumped into canadian womens programs far outweighs the mens programs, from age grade to clubs.
It’s a question I’ve been mulling over and I’d like to give my top reasons, some of them touched on by the comments above.
1. More competition for top male athletes in contact sports
If you’re growing up in Canada as a top male athlete who excels at running contact sports, you’re likely not thinking rugby, you’re thinking football, not soccer but what those outside of North America would call gridiron. The CFL in Canada, the Canadian Football League. Actually in the early 1900s we had english rugby and canadian rugby, this is what the media at the time called the two games. Canadian rugby evolved into the CFL with Ontario and Quebec at the epicentre. If there was a world ranking for ‘gridiron’ or canadian/american football, Canada would be ranked #2 behind USA. We’ve had a number of athletes who couldn’t quite crack the CFL and have gone on to being top rugby players, Jeff Hassler, Jason Marshall, etc.
The number one sport in Canada is hockey, if you’re outside of North America, you would call it ice hockey but we just call it hockey here. It’s a contact sport, so we have two contact sport options available for males that are ranked way above rugby as a career path. It’s true there is female hockey in Canada but the pathway is nowhere near as developed as a pro option. You can look at the recent example of two young female rugby stars who made the transition from hockey to rugby as teenagers, Carissa Norsten and Krissy Scurfield, both made the World Rugby dream team in 7s by the time they were 20. It’s unlikely you would see any male hockey stars making that transition, none that I’m aware of, as the bright lights of a potential NHL contract are just too bright.
2. The university system has blocked men’s rugby
Women’s rugby is a sanctioned sport by USports, the national governing body for university sports in Canada. Men’s rugby is not. There are 6 sanctioned team sports for men, Hockey, Football, Basketball, Volleyball, Soccer and Curling. There are 7 sanctioned team sports for women, Hockey, Basketball, Volleyball, Soccer, Curling, Rugby and Field Hockey. Again the reason comes back to football, because football teams have such large team numbers, they can dress 52 players for a game, they use up a large chunk of the allocated male athlete quotas for sanctioned sports. Women added field hockey and rugby to try and balance the numbers. Again “canadian” rugby comes back to bite “english” rugby on the butt.
This makes a huge difference, sanctioned sports attract money, have more media coverage, higher profile, etc. The Canadian Rugby Foundation recently started a privately funded CUMRC, Canadian University Men’s Rugby Championship, but it doesn’t have the same impact. It was started in 2017 and UBC have won it every year except the year UVic won it, so BC based universities have dominated. In women’s university rugby, BC have never won a title, the power houses recently are in Quebec/Ontario. The University of Laval in Quebec City have won 3 of the last 4 titles. Now ask yourself how many Quebec athletes are on the national women’s team and how many are on the national men’s team, 5 of the 15 starters on the women’s team that recently beat France are from Quebec. There were no Quebec players on the men’s national XVs team that played in the recent PNC.
University rugby as a sanctioned sport has allowed an elite pathway for women across the country, it’s not the same case in men’s rugby. An interesting side note when Jack Hanratty recently announced his departure from the women’s 7s program he took up a coaching position at the University of Ottawa that was advertised at over $100K, it was to coach the women’s team there.
3. World Rugby interference and Rugby Canada incompetence
This is a large catchall category that answers questions like, “why is Kingsley Jones still here and why did he have his contract renewed after failing to make the World Cup”. You would have to go back in history to understand the level of interference and incompetence that has impacted the men’s program.
Women’s rugby was immune from much of this as it was ignored by World Rugby for many years and it’s only recently World Rugby has paid attention to the women’s game, by that time Canada had already established itself as a leader in the women’s game so there was no “parachuting in experts” from abroad. You could go back to 2014, ten years ago, to see a similar situation to today in the women’s game. Canada were ranked #2 in the world having lost to England in the final of the World Cup, Ireland defeated NZ who didn’t even make the top 4 that year. Francois Ratier was head coach of Canada’s women’s XVs team.
In 2014 the men’s team were well into the 2nd term of Kieran Crowley’s 8 year run as head coach. In March 2008 when he arrived they were ranked 15th by the time he left in January 2016 they were 19th. The previous coach was Ric Suggitt who had been let go because Canada only managed a 12-12 draw with Japan at the 2007 World Cup, although they had defeated USA 56-7 in the World Cup qualifier. It has been 17 years since the men’s program have had a Canadian head coach who was familiar with the Canadian rugby infrastructure, who had deep roots to grassroots rugby across the country and had a trusted network of talent ID across the country. During those 17 years the club to national team connection and pathway on the men’s side has been slowly eroded and is now a shadow of what it was in Ric Suggitt’s time.
We’ve had two types of head coaches in the modern era, those who are parachuted in and decide to rebuild the support structure based on a mini-model of where they’re from NZ or Wales, Kieran Crowley and Kingsley Jones fall into that category. Then we have the type that take stock of the reality of Canadian rugby and ask what existing structures they can use to their advantage, in that category would be the likes Damian McGrath, Francois Ratier, Jamie Cudmore, Phil Mack.
The study of the Francois Ratier situation is a good example of Rugby Canada incompetence and likely World Rugby interference. When Kieran Crowley suddenly left in 2016, Rugby Canada were left in the lurch, they asked Francois who had just come off a 2nd place finish with the women’s team to step in. He brought along Jamie Cudmore as assistant and they got Canada’s best result at the Americas Rugby Championship that year, despite having very little time to work with the men’s XVs team. Instead of offering Francois the men’s position permanently they hired Mark Anscombe who lasted a year before being let go and then they hired Kingsley Jones in 2017. Francois went on to be Director of Quebec rugby and is now coaching professionally in France, Jamie Cudmore is also now back in France after being treated poorly by Rugby Canada.
Francois when he was head coach of the women’s program made a point of getting players who weren’t on professional contracts to move to the West Coast to play fall/winter rugby, it’s the only climate in Canada that supports winter rugby and he used the BC league to test and evaluate players head to head. When Ric Suggitt was coach if you weren’t in Europe on a pro contract you were competing in the BC Premier against other top players in the fall/winter. Times have changed with MLR now the focus of Canada’s best domestic players but the BC Premier, the top amateur league in North America, is still a useful tool that was largely ignored by Crowley and Jones, it was even more than ignored, it was treated with disdain.
Compare the attitude with a recent post by USA head coach Scott Lawrence on Linkedin, “Hugely excited that the ARP (American Rugby Premiership) competition here in the US is giving minutes in the offseason to US domestic talent… I’m especially grateful to those clubs giving minutes to our Eagles between tours to keep them game sharp!” You would never hear those words from Kingsley Jones or Stephen Aboud, the new Irish HP Director. The Canadian men’s XVs program has the feeling of a service contracted to World Rugby, there’s very little Canadian content in the management and leadership of the program anymore.