2014 Canadian Rugby Championship and General Canadian Rugby Chat.

[jonny24]

Yeah, that's it, sounds like a lot of positive movement is going on in this province. Now if only B.C. could get their act together and go along with the rest of Canada we could get a decent league set up.

I'm sure I've come across it before, but why is BC backwards? Like, is there a reason?

 

[canadafan]

I'm sure I've come across it before, but why is BC backwards? Like, is there a reason?

Part of it is tradition, they have always gotten there way, but they have come around, a bit.

 

[Beerfalo]

There's a couple reasons I can think of, though I'm not positive as I'm not affiliated with anything BCRU.
1) Traditionally rugby is a winter sport and unlike most of Canada, Lower BC and V.Island are suitable for "year round" rugby. They do take a two month winter break which I think is weird.
2) Summer is their 7s season and apparently that's a thing out there. I can't picture a 7s season in Alberta outside of junior levels. I mean we have like three 7s tournaments but that's it really.
3) This one I can understand. BC has universities playing alongside regular clubs. If they play during the winter months they'll have their players available to them. I believe UBC has three teams, UVic has two or three, SFU has one. I thought there was a couple more but I can't think of them. Having a summer season could really hurt these teams.
4) The BC leagues get a good amount of out of province players. I know a bunch of players from Alberta go play in BC once our seasons are done. There's a couple Calgary Hornets out there, some St Albert starters, Leduc has two Fijian backs who play in BC(those guys should NOT be playing Div 2 rugby in Alberta), two guys from my club went out there. That's all I really paid attention to and I'm sure there's some more. If they had a summer schedule they'd probably have a drop off in talent, at least for a bit.

Ideally BC would run alongside the rest of Canada but I won't hold my breath. Still a summer schedule wouldn't make a two month winter break necessary. You'd also be able to play during the nice beautiful summer weather. We could also have a national club championship. I'm sure this year, St Albert RFC(I hate them so much) could hold their own against Balmy Beach or Burnaby Lake but we'll never know. And then there's teams like Montreal Irish, Swilers RFC, Assassins RFC, Campion Grads and Halifax Tars. Probably not as strong as the first three but you never know. It took me way longer than I would have liked to find the other provincial champions. I'm sure there are other benefits to BC joining the rest of Canada but I had a cardio training session and I'm too tired to think of anything else.

 

[jonny24]

Wow, great post @Beerfalo. It would be helpful if CIS would include mens rugby as a sport, then the unis would have a comp to be in and the clubs could play in summer. Then again, don't they have non student players?

Damn,now you've got me dreaming of Canadian Club Championship...

 

[canadafan]

Still think there is a future with the CRC, whether it is expanded to 6 teams or split to an East/West tournament with American clubs.

Example:

West:
Bears
Wolf Pack
Seattle
Denver
San Fran

East:
Blues
Rock
Chicago
New York
Boston

 

[LittleGuy]

Anyone else nervous about this 7's season? I know the team is in a transition but we played a couple of brutal games last week, think this event on the series is huge and will probably determine if we'll be a mid table side or down in the relegation battles.

 

[canadafan]

I think this is the key weekend, a bad showing here and I will become worried. It was after Dubai where we turned it around last year, though.

 

[Beerfalo]

I honestly think Canada has another bad showing this week. C'mon, even with a healthy team we'd struggle to advance in a group consisting of Fiji, Scotland and France. We're without some of our best 7s players and three tournaments in haven't been able to field a proper starting lineup. Wellington is two months away and I'm hoping that's where we'll get a strong showing, assuming everyone is healthy. Mack(2 games), Dala(3 games), Jones(2 games), Hirayama(3 games), Hearn(1 game), Braid(playing pro so no longer in the 7s program) have all been absent this season and they are some of our best players. Let's face it, a roster of Admir Cejvanovic, Justin Douglas, Sean Duke, Mike Fuailefau, Lucas Hammond, Pat Kay, Ciaran Hearn, John Moonlight, Jack Smith, Conor Trainor, Sean White and Adam Zaruba is pretty lack luster compared to other squads right now. It has a lot of future potential but it looks like a development team compared to what we could field.

I honestly hope the Vancouver Bears/Canada Maple Leafs becomes a full-time thing. I know Rugby Canada sent that team to some tournament back in the summer but it would be good to have a full-time developmental 7s team playing in as many tournaments as they can. It gets the players good experience and would feed the full Canada 7s squad.

Unfortunately jonny24 it's pretty much impossible for CIS men's rugby to become a sanctioned sport. I'm not sure exactly the full details but I believe women and men have to have equal sports in CIS. Women have rugby because it's a counter to Football. If they add Men's rugby they'd need to find another sport(s) for the women folk. I'm not sure how the BCRU and Universities work together. I'd assume UBC, UVic and SFU would be students for the most part. The University teams in Alberta have their own little season and are made up of mostly University students but club players are welcome to join. I think there's a U of Manitoba team in the Manitoba union but they are the Wombats instead of the Bisons. Reason being is university teams can't be fully affiliated with the actual schools as they are a CIS sport. It's also why the U of A team is called the Cubs instead of the Golden Bears. There's other rules but I don't play university rugby so I'm not really quite sure about them.

A Canadian Rugby Club Championship could be pretty damn cool though Rugby Canada and the provincial unions would need to help subsidize it. We have two divisions, an East and a West. It would cut down on travel which would save costs for the clubs. Have the division play held in one predetermined East and West host city alternating between the different provinces each year. The final would alternate between East and West each year. The East would consist of Ontario, Newfoundland, Quebec and the Maritimes. So something like Balmy Beach, Montreal Irish, Halifax Tars and Swilers RFC. The West is then obviously BC and the Prairies and would look like St Albert RFC, Burnaby Lake, Campion Grads and Assassins RFC. I'd have Rugby Canada mandate that Crowley(and any future coach) have staff present for every game in the CRCC.
First Option: We have just a straight up 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3 format. So this year it could have been Burnaby Lake vs Campion Grads and St Albert vs Assassins in let's say Vancouver while in the Toronto it would be Balmy Beach vs Halifax Tars and Montreal Irish vs Swilers RFC. Then you guys know the rest.
Second Option: It would probably be more expensive due to duration but there could be a round robin tournament between the West Province champions and East Province champions. It seems fair to me since each team plays the other three and we get proper results. There's already something similar for Eastern clubs, the Al Charron Cup, which is held over a weekend. That seems kinda brutal though to play three games in three days.

I'd love to see an extended CRC/NARC canadafan but that would require USA Rugby to actually make a competent decision. First, and a lot more realistic, I'd like to see the Voyageurs make the leap from just a U19 team to a full Men side. Canada needs a strong Quebec and the Quebec based players don't seem to get a lot of attention from The Rock. The Voyageurs making the leap up would also increase the amount of games to 4 home and 4 away for each team for 8 total games. Would help if TSN could get in on it and broadcast the games/promote the league/sport.

Dream Sectiooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
It would be nice if USA Rugby could get it together and form some American Rugby Rep teams. Sadly I've heard the different clubs down there don't particularly like each other and USA Rugby seems pretty incapable. They do have regional governing bodies that could be the basis for ARR teams with some tweaking. Here's the different unions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Rugby#Geographical_Unions . I'd personally target Seattle(PNW), San Jose(NorCal), LA/San Diego(SoCal), Denver(Rocky Mountain States), Houston(Texas), Chicago(Mid-West), Philadelphia(Penn/SoJersey), New York(NYC Metro), Boston(New England), Washington(Capital Region) and Atlanta(South). Combined with the CRC that would give North America 16 high level clubs(5 Canadian, 11 American). Something similar to MLS, that may not be the strongest league at first but grows over the years and promotes the sport while giving domestic players a chance to play pro. Focus on Canadians(CRC)/Americans(ARR) while allowing a set amount of foreign players to help increase the quality of play. More players(better athletes) may choose rugby at a younger age if they had an actual path to a pro career instead of the pinnacle being CDI League/Marshall/PRP/ARP clubs or the CRC which is only borderline semi-pro. Nothing but a pipe dream as it would require A LOT of investment/funds and all the levels of rugby to co-operate but still it's nice to dream.

I think that's all my thoughts for now.

 

[jonny24]

I knew about the whole football and equal number of men vs women. I still think its a load of crap. I'm all for equality, but university sport should be representing things a bit more realistically. Do women play football? Not really. Do men and women both play most other sports? Yep. In fact, women get Field Hockey AND Rugby, vs men's football. The rationalization being total number of players being equal. It would be just as "fair" to have an equal number of sports vs players.

I've had the same thoughts about combining regional sides in Canada and the US. It seems a shame that we have ready-made teams in the CRC, but they only have their short season to do anything. I hadn't actually worked out what the American teams would be, but what you've come up with sounds pretty good. Even if only 4 could get going to start off, we could actually have a competition going and add the others as they are able.

What do you think are the chances the NRFL have considered or talked to the CRC clubs? Having 4 up and running franchises would go a long way to reaching a starting point.

 

[Kempistry]

I honestly think Canada has another bad showing this week. C'mon, even with a healthy team we'd struggle to advance in a group consisting of Fiji, Scotland and France. We're without some of our best 7s players and three tournaments in haven't been able to field a proper starting lineup. Wellington is two months away and I'm hoping that's where we'll get a strong showing, assuming everyone is healthy. Mack(2 games), Dala(3 games), Jones(2 games), Hirayama(3 games), Hearn(1 game), Braid(playing pro so no longer in the 7s program) have all been absent this season and they are some of our best players. Let's face it, a roster of Admir Cejvanovic, Justin Douglas, Sean Duke, Mike Fuailefau, Lucas Hammond, Pat Kay, Ciaran Hearn, John Moonlight, Jack Smith, Conor Trainor, Sean White and Adam Zaruba is pretty lack luster compared to other squads right now. It has a lot of future potential but it looks like a development team compared to what we could field.

I honestly hope the Vancouver Bears/Canada Maple Leafs becomes a full-time thing. I know Rugby Canada sent that team to some tournament back in the summer but it would be good to have a full-time developmental 7s team playing in as many tournaments as they can. It gets the players good experience and would feed the full Canada 7s squad.

Unfortunately jonny24 it's pretty much impossible for CIS men's rugby to become a sanctioned sport. I'm not sure exactly the full details but I believe women and men have to have equal sports in CIS. Women have rugby because it's a counter to Football. If they add Men's rugby they'd need to find another sport(s) for the women folk. I'm not sure how the BCRU and Universities work together. I'd assume UBC, UVic and SFU would be students for the most part. The University teams in Alberta have their own little season and are made up of mostly University students but club players are welcome to join. I think there's a U of Manitoba team in the Manitoba union but they are the Wombats instead of the Bisons. Reason being is university teams can't be fully affiliated with the actual schools as they are a CIS sport. It's also why the U of A team is called the Cubs instead of the Golden Bears. There's other rules but I don't play university rugby so I'm not really quite sure about them.

A Canadian Rugby Club Championship could be pretty damn cool though Rugby Canada and the provincial unions would need to help subsidize it. We have two divisions, an East and a West. It would cut down on travel which would save costs for the clubs. Have the division play held in one predetermined East and West host city alternating between the different provinces each year. The final would alternate between East and West each year. The East would consist of Ontario, Newfoundland, Quebec and the Maritimes. So something like Balmy Beach, Montreal Irish, Halifax Tars and Swilers RFC. The West is then obviously BC and the Prairies and would look like St Albert RFC, Burnaby Lake, Campion Grads and Assassins RFC. I'd have Rugby Canada mandate that Crowley(and any future coach) have staff present for every game in the CRCC.
First Option: We have just a straight up 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3 format. So this year it could have been Burnaby Lake vs Campion Grads and St Albert vs Assassins in let's say Vancouver while in the Toronto it would be Balmy Beach vs Halifax Tars and Montreal Irish vs Swilers RFC. Then you guys know the rest.
Second Option: It would probably be more expensive due to duration but there could be a round robin tournament between the West Province champions and East Province champions. It seems fair to me since each team plays the other three and we get proper results. There's already something similar for Eastern clubs, the Al Charron Cup, which is held over a weekend. That seems kinda brutal though to play three games in three days.

I'd love to see an extended CRC/NARC canadafan but that would require USA Rugby to actually make a competent decision. First, and a lot more realistic, I'd like to see the Voyageurs make the leap from just a U19 team to a full Men side. Canada needs a strong Quebec and the Quebec based players don't seem to get a lot of attention from The Rock. The Voyageurs making the leap up would also increase the amount of games to 4 home and 4 away for each team for 8 total games. Would help if TSN could get in on it and broadcast the games/promote the league/sport.

Dream Sectiooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
It would be nice if USA Rugby could get it together and form some American Rugby Rep teams. Sadly I've heard the different clubs down there don't particularly like each other and USA Rugby seems pretty incapable. They do have regional governing bodies that could be the basis for ARR teams with some tweaking. Here's the different unions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Rugby#Geographical_Unions . I'd personally target Seattle(PNW), San Jose(NorCal), LA/San Diego(SoCal), Denver(Rocky Mountain States), Houston(Texas), Chicago(Mid-West), Philadelphia(Penn/SoJersey), New York(NYC Metro), Boston(New England), Washington(Capital Region) and Atlanta(South). Combined with the CRC that would give North America 16 high level clubs(5 Canadian, 11 American). Something similar to MLS, that may not be the strongest league at first but grows over the years and promotes the sport while giving domestic players a chance to play pro. Focus on Canadians(CRC)/Americans(ARR) while allowing a set amount of foreign players to help increase the quality of play. More players(better athletes) may choose rugby at a younger age if they had an actual path to a pro career instead of the pinnacle being CDI League/Marshall/PRP/ARP clubs or the CRC which is only borderline semi-pro. Nothing but a pipe dream as it would require A LOT of investment/funds and all the levels of rugby to co-operate but still it's nice to dream.

I think that's all my thoughts for now.

To give you some context my club beat the Montreal Irish twice this year and got pounded like 70-20 by Balmy Beach, albeit with a weakened team. It isn't that teams like the Montreal Iriah are lacking for equal competition closer to home. The Ottawa Irish are playing in the Al Charron Cup way off in Newfoundland or wherever but lost a combined 100-20 in two games against a local team. They don't need to travel for competition, only variety.

I think it'd be more interesting to have some sort of representative rugby superior to club level but maybe sub CRC. Not sure how you do that. If you took all the best players from Quebec then you might compete with a Balmy Beach or whomever. Quebec recently put together a representative sevens team to play a tournament and I think they did well. I think that's a better option supposing you can get decent competition. Or alternatively permanently split leagues by tier so that the best players, as much as possible, are all playing against each other.

Again geography is the main impediment to all these great ideas!!

 

[welshglory]

You're never going to have a fully pro "club" comp in the usa or canada lets get that's straight right now. There's no support for it, its financially not feasible, and the quality/depth simply isn't there.

Keep the local provincial club leages as they are.

It's going to be city franchises and/or provincial unions, or nothing.

 

[jonny24]

You're never going to have a fully pro "club" comp in the usa or canada lets get that's straight right now. There's no support for it, its financially not feasible, and the quality/depth simply isn't there.

Keep the local provincial club leages as they are.

It's going to be city franchises and/or provincial unions, or nothing.

I don't think anyone is really suggesting anything otherwise.

 

[LittleGuy]

You're never going to have a fully pro "club" comp in the usa or canada lets get that's straight right now. There's no support for it, its financially not feasible, and the quality/depth simply isn't there.

Keep the local provincial club leages as they are.

It's going to be city franchises and/or provincial unions, or nothing.

Never is a very long time, though I agree that at the moment a professional rugby competitions chances of getting startedin the foreseeable future and even more so being succesful in North America are slim and none, with slim on a train out of town.

Looks like the 7's side has embraced the XV's 2nd half collapse routine, we were leading France by 21 at half and proceeded to blow it. At least we've looked a little more into it this series so far. Maybe some points can be salvaged tommorow, still the cup rounds could have been ours.

 

[canadafan]

I have said it many times, mental toughness is the biggest issue facing our men's sides. There was no excuse to blow that lead. Curiously, I don't believe I saw Middleton make any subs in that second half.

 

[Shaggy]

Never is a very long time, though I agree that at the moment a professional rugby competitions chances of getting startedin the foreseeable future and even more so being succesful in North America are slim and none, with slim on a train out of town.

Looks like the 7's side has embraced the XV's 2nd half collapse routine, we were leading France by 21 at half and proceeded to blow it. At least we've looked a little more into it this series so far. Maybe some points can be salvaged tommorow, still the cup rounds could have been ours.

I think the more likely option (professional team wise) is that one or two sides will be included in Super Rugby first - if that happens, maybe the profile of Rugby will be raised a bit, and a professional North American league will spawn from that

 

[canadafan]

if they were both west coast sides (San Fran and Vancouver) they could work. However Vancouver is a 16 hr direct flight to Auckland, that will always hinder a Canadian side from being in Super Rugby.

 

[Beerfalo]

North America in Super Rugby eh. Sounds as crazy as Japan fielding a team in a SA conference. I can hear Super Rugby fans *****ing as I type haha. It could be an interesting set up in the future though I'm pretty sure it will never happen. A "realistic" future conference could be two American based teams, a Canadian and two Japanese franchises. I'm thinking LA and San Jose for America, Vancouver for Canada and Tokyo and ??? for Japan(I don't know Japan). They'd obviously need some T1 "mercenaries" to bolster the ranks but hopefully they'd look at a lot of domestic players. I could definitely see a future LA team throwing money at some older All Blacks to try and make a splash. I mean it is the LA way.

The travel time/distance would definitely suck but at least there's direct flights between each of the North American cities and Tokyo. I think the flight time is actually similar between Tokyo and the NA cities and Tokyo and the Aussie/NZ cities, just big time zone differences. The NA teams would also be quick flights from each other and are in the same time zone which is helpful. Venues could be BC Place(Vancouver), Avaya Stadium(San Jose) and StubHub Center/Future LAFC Stadium(Los Angeles). Just need to find investors/sponsors/owners to throw money at these teams and the greedy heads of Super Rugby. Can't be that hard right....

Then we have club rugby feeding the CRC teams. The CRC teams feed the Vancouver Bears(I like bears and this is my hypothetical team). Then the Bears and Europe feeds the CMNT. I'd like to see less and less 7s players jumping right into 15s play for the CMNT.

Non-Super Rugby Talk but still CRC DREAM SECTIOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNN
Realistically my 16 team dream NARC isn't going to happen anytime soon, if ever. But there might be two CRC expansion options, one of which I already talked about and really want. Rugby Canada needs to help the Voyageurs jump up to the senior level. Eastern Ontario/Quebec may not field the strongest team but it would give their players a chance that they don't really get with The Rock. Then there are the Seattle Saracens who need an increase in competition. If they don't get moved up to the CDI Premier League or transfer to the PRP maybe Rugby Canada could invite them to play in the CRC? They seem to make up a good chunk of the domestic Eagles and they play under the Canadian umbrella already(at least for now) so it could be a fit. Two new teams could give the 10(5H-5A) good/great quality games and give us three West teams and three East. Of course a TV deal would be nice as well, even if there's not much money at first it couldn't hurt to have TSN promoting the sport and league.

 

[Shaggy]

if they were both west coast sides (San Fran and Vancouver) they could work. However Vancouver is a 16 hr direct flight to Auckland, that will always hinder a Canadian side from being in Super Rugby.

Yes, true, but Super Rugby/SANZAR seem to be extremely expansion focused, when it comes to tapping new markets/increasing revenue streams. I realise this isn't a super rugby thread, and don't want to hijack the thread, but, they are already well down the path of the conference system, so, once they hit the magic number of 24 teams, I can see Canadian and US teams becoming part of it. 24 teams would allow four conferences of six, allowing all six SA sides to compete in one conference, Australia and New Zealand would have their five teams in their conference, and could take Japan and one other Pacific/Asian based team. Leaving the last conference to be made up of six teams from North and South America.

I'm not saying I'm in favour of this, merely that I can see SANZAR looking into it, because of their current mindset - it wouldn't happen for a few years anyway, because these changes seem to be agreed upon when the broadcasting agreements come up for renewal.
@Beerfalo - I get your points, particularly the travel/distance issues - it would have to be a conference set to lower the travelling costs and hours

 

[Beerfalo]

A six team American conference could be interesting. I'm picturing Super Rugby fans thoughts on a 24 team league spanning South Africa, the Americas and Australasia and it's making me smile. I'd assume a West Coast would be preferred so I imagine one Canadian, two Argentina teams, three American(cause MONEY not talent). So probably Vancouver, San Jose, Los Angeles, Houston, Buenos Aires and some other Argentina city. Though maybe an American side could be replaced by another South American side to make for three in NA and three in SA. Montevideo, Santiago and Sao Paulo could all be good choices but I'm not sure if there's the money to make it really worthwhile.

I assume a 2nd Asian team would be between a mostly Pacific Islander Singapore side and a 2nd Japanese team with me leaning more towards Japan.

Still it would definitely hurt North American exposure to leave out cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia, Denver, Dallas, Atlanta, Toronto, Montreal and the province of Alberta(Edmonton/Calgary).

 

[canadafan]

You could make one team Seattle and have it a Can/USA team. While I like the idea of an America conference, I hate the idea of only 1 Canadian team.