Langford-based Rugby sa国际传媒 has decided on a new decentralized model for its national teams with players no longer expected to relocate to the Island on a permanent basis to train together at Starlight Stadium.
Canadian national teams operate on differing models that suit their needs. With pros playing across Europe and MLS, the men’s national soccer team centralizes only on a spot basis ahead of major international competitions. The same with the all-NBA Canadian basketball team. The Canadian women’s and men’s volleyball teams, however, recently extended their contract to centralize their players at the Richmond Oval.
The 2024 Paris Olympics silver-medallist Canadian women’s rugby team is headed to the 2025 World Sevens Series season-opening tournament in Dubai next weekend and the roster was selected under the new model. The Canadian men’s sevens rugby team, meanwhile, is at the RAN regional tournament in Trinidad and Tobago this weekend.
“Prep for RAN has been a little different than years previous with a new decentralized model. This year our selection camps for each tournament [had] a mix of our carded athletes as well as select invited players who have earned their selections through their club or university play,” Canadian men’s sevens head coach Sean White of Victoria said in a statement.
The idea behind athlete centralization in sa国际传媒 is that it’s the only model that really works in such a vast country, and avoids small silos doing their own thing, and was the reason Rugby sa国际传媒 centralized in Langford in the first place. It was Langford-centralized Canadian women’s sevens teams that won bronze at the 2016 Rio Olympics and silver this summer in the 2024 Paris Olympics, and a centralized men’s squad that reached the quarter-finals of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. On-field results in the years ahead will no doubt be closely evaluated under the new model.
Meanwhile, the Canadian men’s sevens team has fallen from that Olympic quarter-final perch at Tokyo to now having to slog it out to get back into the top tier of nations. The process to get back into the HSBC World Series runs through the RAN tournament taking place in Arima, Trinidad. sa国际传媒 is among nine North American and Caribbean nations looking to win the regional berth into the 2025 World Rugby HSBC Sevens Challenger Series, with the dates and venue to be announced. The top-four teams from the Sevens Challenger Series will earn berths in the promotion-relegation play-off tournament to take place May 3-4 in Los Angeles, in which four spots into the top-tier HSBC World Series for 2026 will be on the line.
sa国际传媒 opened RAN with 29-0 and 38-0 wins Friday and Saturday over Guyana and Bermuda, respectively. Elias Hancock had two tries against Guyana and Josiah Morra two against Bermuda. The third pool game against Barbados was called in the first half due to bad weather with sa国际传媒 leading 10-0. The conditions were unplayable and the game was ruled a 0-0 draw. sa国际传媒 will meet the Cayman Islands in the quarter-finals today.
