From the Editor’s Desk – September 2024

A Conversation with Ralph McRae, Co-Founder of the Vancouver Highlanders

I had a chance to talk to Ralph McRae, one of the driving forces behind the Vancouver Highlanders, and I’ll share my thoughts from the conversation. I’m sure if I get anything wrong, Ralph or Curry will let me know.

The first question I asked was “will the Highlanders be back next year” and the answer was “I very much hope so”. So that leaves me with the feeling that the will is there but maybe there’s a few pieces that need to fall into place between now and then.

A big one obviously is financial and we talked a bit about that. It takes over $100K to host an international team, $150K if you’re talking about making it an economically viable situation. That means you need the revenue coming in and one of the big items is ticket sales and ticket price. Figures like 3,000 spectators at $50 a ticket is what you would need. My own opinion, I’m not sure BC rugby fans are quite ready to put out $50 for a match at Burnaby Lake but one thing I didn’t realize was that the plan was to have bleachers at Burnaby so the capacity would be able to reach 3,000. That didn’t happen and in the end the Highlanders made the first game free and got around 1200 attendance. The next game they upped the tickets to $30 and got half that number. They moved to Klahanie and they upped attendance by about 500 to 700, so it sounds like they were back close to the original 1200 number.

There’s no doubt Ralph would like to see more support from the rugby community. He was encouraged by fan interactions as the season progressed, especially in the games against Brazil and Canada XV, kids coming out to get autographs, that didn’t happen in the first two games, it takes a while to build fan engagement.

We talked about venues, I thought Willoughby Stadium, where TWU play and where Canada are playing some of their women’s XVs games, would be a good choice. Google says capacity there is 6000+. They apparently looked at that option, also options in Victoria and Penticton, but it seems that Burnaby with bleachers for 3000 was the plan to start the season and when bleachers didn’t materialize, then Klahanie was the choice but in the long term the capacity there wouldn’t make it economically viable to hit the $100k to $150k targets.

Another learning curve was reaching out to teams earlier, they found teams like Hong Kong, Spain, Belgium had already locked in their summer schedules.

Ralph was proud that they contributed 5 athletes to the national program and that the Highlanders v Canada XV match put 60 top Canadian players on the field in a competitive match.

We got into a conversation about funding sources and I brought up the idea that they’re basically running the BC men’s senior program. That should bring up some funding conversations with the BCRU I thought. Ralph went one better, they could run the Canada men’s XVs program for a fraction of the cost that it costs Rugby Canada. He noted how much he saw players improve over the short time they were together in the summer, if they had the program running year round, the improvements would be a level above. It’s a conversation that needs to take place I think. If the Highlanders ran the Canadian men’s XVs program it would be Canadians at the helm, from top to bottom.

What’s next, Ralph indicated he would like to sit in a room with 10 to 15 people who want to make a difference in Canadian rugby and see if there was a way to move forward. He has put his product on the field, he’s shown what he can do, how can this gem of an idea be improved?

He ended on a story, a very Canadian story, about Gretzky and Lemieux. How Gretzky mentored Lemieux at the 1987 Canada Cup, Gretzky the veteran who had just won six straight scoring titles in the NHL, Lemieux at 21 coming into the Team Canada training camp. Lemieux, later, credited his Canada Cup experience as a turning point in his career. Ralph points out that, likewise, they can bring in established stars such as Melani Nanai to play alongside upcoming stars like the McMullin brothers and mentor them, Rugby Canada can’t do that.

The final word to Ralph, a direct quote, “If it’s worth doing let’s do it, if it’s not then quit wasting my time and yours.”