Canada @ Rock Bottom

[rowan]

[Puja]

Really sad to see. There's a lot of potential up there and it's just being p*ssed away.

Puja

[rowan]

Their demise began with the advent of professionalism, so it seems pretty clear they never quite made the transition. I remember when they were rightfully considered one of rugby's Big 10, alongside the 8 foundation unions plus Argentina. Now they are ranked 23rd after a loss to Brazil. Alarm bells should be ringing, but it seems like the officialdom is still not listening . . .

[rowan]

Boo hoo !!

TORONTO – Rugby Canada plans to talk to the sport’s world governing body about a fairer shake when it comes to the world rankings.

Canada fell five spots to No. 23 in the latest World Rugby rankings after going 1-4-0 at the Americas Rugby Championship with a largely developmental squad.

Rugby Canada wants to be treated the same way as Argentina, whose matches at the six-team tournament are not deemed to be of test-status because it sends a second-string side that plays as Argentina ‘A.’

“We would like to be held to the same standard,” said Rugby Canada chairman Tim Powers, who does not want Canada to be penalized in the rankings when the results do not go its way after sending a young side to gain experience.

Canadian coach Mark Anscombe estimated that his ARC squad was without 12 or 13 top players, whom he elected to leave at their European clubs.

“If I’d brought back all the players, their clubs would have kicked up a stink,” he said. “And that could very much jeopardize their contract for renewal next time they’re around the table. Because the English, French, Welsh teams all want their players. They get overseas players to help them through that period when their own national players are away with the national team.”

Anscombe’s approach, like Canadian coaches before him, is to summon such elite players for the most pressing games, like World Cup qualifiers, and high-profile tests.

The Canadian men started the ARC ranked 18th in the world, losing ground throughout.

A drop in the world rankings can have consequences, leading to lesser fixtures and perhaps less funding.

“We’re prepared right now to sacrifice the world rankings to build towards June (tests) and towards the World Cup. And that’s not without risk,” Powers conceded. “It’s something we’ll continue to look at.”

http://lethbridgeherald.com/sports/nati ... -arc-drop/

[rowan]

Interesting story about an annual rugby event in Nova Scotia here - held in a barn! http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/14 ... N.facebook

[rowan]

Woe Canada!

Now that the euphoria of the Vancouver 7s has faded it’s time to get back to serious business. To steal a phrase from Chris LeFevre’s open letter, Canadian rugby is ‘heading into the abyss’ and it’s time to start clawing our way out. Conveniently Rugby Canada’s Annual General Meeting is this weekend in Toronto. They might want to sell tickets for this one as it promises to be the most eventful administrative weekend in recent memory.

The first order of business must be to address a perceived disconnect between Rugby Canada and the general rugby populace. A flimsy statement released following the defeat to Brazil did little to assuage that concern. It’s a difficult situation we find ourselves in and despite the words of Jim Dixon – General Manager of Rugby Operations and Performance – there’s no quick fix.

“Our stated goal is to qualify for the 2019 World Cup and improve on our results. We will not waiver from these objectives. We will analyze all aspects of our performance in the ARC and make the necessary adjustments to ensure the best possible outcome in the June series.”

Losing to Uruguay was a disappointment, though many saw it coming. A fair few pundits picked the Teros to win at home given Canada’s poor form in the opening rounds of the Americas Rugby Championship. The collapse in São Paulo was disheartening, an icy cold dose of reality, but let’s not pretend this was a bolt from the blue.

Starting on September 19, 2011, Canada enjoyed one glorious week in the sunshine with a 73.74 points grading, good enough for 11th place on the official World Rugby Rankings. It was Canada’s highest point since the ranking system was introduced in September of 2003. Two years later we were still at a healthy 14th but by the end of 2013 we hit the wall.

In 31 test matches since June of 2014 Canada has won just seven times. Of those only Georgia was ranked higher, a one-point win during the 2015 World Cup warm-ups. That was Canada’s only test win in 11 attempts. A 17-13 result over Namibia was the only win out of six the previous year. 0-3 vs Romania, 0-3 vs Japan, 0-5 vs the USA.

On March 3, 2017, the scoreboard at the Estádio do Pacaembu read Brazil 24, Canada 23 on full time. The World Rugby Rankings were published on Monday. Canada were at their lowest, with a score of 59.63 they were in 23rd, behind Germany and Spain. Germany have since fallen bumping Canada up to 22nd, marginally above Kenya.

Continues here: http://www.americasrugbynews.com/2017/0 ... oe-canada/

[rowan]

Canadian joins Chiefs:

With No.8 and Japan captain Michael Leitch poised to join the Sunwolves, the Chiefs have helped fill the void by signing 25-year-old Ardron, who has played four seasons for Welsh outfit Ospreys.
Capable at lock and loose forward, he has played 22 Tests for Canada and captained them at the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
"I can't wait to get to New Zealand and find out what makes Super Rugby the best club competition in the world and be in an environment with such great players and coaches," Ardron said.
Chiefs coach Dave Rennie described Ardron as an experienced and dynamic player.
He will link with Bay of Plenty in the NPC.

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/sport/r ... -year-deal

[rowan]

Looks like they're getting desperate with their recruitment:



http://www.calgarysun.com/2017/05/12/ba ... onto-pitch

[rowan]

Friendly played in Canada at the weekend. I imagine it would've involved most of the country's top home-based players:

Canada A 40-15 British Columbia Bears

[Lizard]

Canada are at real risk of ending up in the repechage for RWC2019 qualifying. I don't see them beating USA in the North round for Americas 2. Uruguay should be backing themselves to repeat the dose they have them in February (especially given their higher ranking). I'm sure Canada will bring more to the table next time but they're looking a bit shaky.

[rowan]

Canada are at real risk of ending up in the repechage for RWC2019 qualifying. I don't see them beating USA in the North round for Americas 2. Uruguay should be backing themselves to repeat the dose they have them in February (especially given their higher ranking). I'm sure Canada will bring more to the table next time but they're looking a bit shaky.

No way this Canadian team should be going to the World Cup anyway. Not if they want quality. (I might sound like a hypocrite, but I think if they wanted quality and teams to be on top of their game at the tournament, they should never have expanded beyond 16. That was a nice, compact little tournament with equitable scheduling and easy to follow. But now they've opened it up to allow for under-performing tier 2 nations and the cream of tier 3, they might as well added a few more of the latter and make it 24, for the sake of a better format).

[rowan]

Friendly played in Canada at the weekend. I imagine it would've involved most of the country's top home-based players:

Canada A 40-15 British Columbia Bears

Match video if anyone's interested:

[rowan]

One of the best sports columnists in Canada Cathal Kelly who writes for The Globe and Mail writes this about the state of Canadian Rugby


------------------------
Drowning postmortem offers little for Canadian men’srugby program
Jul 2, 2017

For many years, Canadian men’s rugby was a water-treading international endeavour. The senior team never could quite manage a signature moment or tournament, but the players did routinely keep their heads in the air.

That quiet streak ended on the weekend, as the men’s rugby team slipped underwater for the first time.

Canada didn’t just lose to the United States in the second leg of a home-and-away qualification for the World Cup. It was manhandled 52-16 in a sloppy effort. This will be the first time in the history of the Rugby World Cup that Canada has not qualified directly into the tournament.

Afterward, Rugby Canada announced it would be conducting a “comprehensive review” of recent play “including all aspects of our technical, tactical and logistical protocols.”
Yes, I’m sure that will fix things: ‘It’s possible that after four-dozen interviews and hundreds of hours of dissecting game tape, we may have identified the problem. We keep scoring less points than the other guy.’

Internal investigations – especially ones that are publicly announced beforehand – are for organizations in auto-da-fé mode. Because when you start looking for people to blame, you have guaranteed you will find them. Otherwise, what was the point?

The internal turmoil will be matched by increasing external pressures. The key problem with Canadian rugby is that too few of our top competitors play professionally in the best leagues in the world. Some others don’t play at all until they’re called onto the national team. Essentially, Canada’s rugby team doesn’t play rugby. And certainly not the type of rugby that makes players better.

The Canadian set-up can’t manufacture those experiences or simulate that level. The best route for a player into an English, French or Australian professional competition is by catching notice at a major tournament. Such as the World Cup.

And it will go without saying that it is difficult for a young hopeful to look his best when his team is getting repeatedly buried by middling competition.

Getting it from both inside and outside – this is how bad streaks become death spirals.

Canada can still qualify for Japan 2019, but will have to wait until next February to do it. It plays Uruguay in a last-chance home-and-away playoff. Canada has already lost to the South American side once this year, though narrowly and while fielding an inexperienced team.

The problem isn’t qualification as such. Let’s assume Canada qualifies, because if it doesn’t the whole operation will have to be scorched. That doesn’t require planning. It just needs a few people moving around the organization sticking demolition charges to administrative I-beams. Then you start again, presumably with a comprehensive review of the previous comprehensive review.

The problem now is time.

The next eight months should have been spent scaring up sponsorship money and taking concrete steps to get the national team into World Cup-shape. This is not to suggest that Canada would ever have been any sort of favourite, but the entry alone would have given the set-up two years of ballast. Now that might’ve been a good time for an unannounced review of what’s going on, followed by some quiet changes. You get more good work done when there is no panic to do so.

All that potential calm has gone out the window. Now the next eight months will be spent in an ugly stasis, sweating the result of two games you probably wish you could play right now just to get them over with.

This is an ‘idle hands do the devil’s work’ scenario. Because the ship is listing, a lot of people will need to be seen running around with their hair on fire trying to do something, though there’s nothing to really do. Canada is either better than Uruguay or it isn’t. The team you already have will either be up for it or it won’t. No amount of executive early mornings will affect the outcome one way or the other. All they can do is add to a general, unsettled sense of unease.

The only people who can fix this now are on the team.

The soundings from that level aren’t very good either. Canadian coach Mark Anscombe was suitably excoriating after Saturday’s game. One of the many lovely things about the sport is that its practitioners are encouraged to speak plainly. There was none of that “good effort, bad result” nonsense that infects most North American games. Anscombe knew his team was bad and said so.

The worrying thing was how structural Anscombe was in his criticisms. To hear him tell it, the Canadians didn’t lose because they were out-hustled or out-thought. They lost because the entire program is intrinsically flawed.

“One of the major differences you saw out there today was the size of the big men [the United States] has coming onto the field. We don’t have those types of players,” he said. “In today’s game, you have to have big men that can carry the ball and get you forward and we’re not producing them in Canada.”

It’s not quite a white flag, but it does sound like someone who would like to retreat for the winter and rethink the whole war.

Freed of the responsibility of planning for Japan, Anscombe has plenty of time now to cogitate what it all means.

Unfortunately, these sorts of performance limbos rarely generate positive ideas or change. More often, they represent the quiet that precedes collapse.

[rowan]

Anscombe's post match interview https://soundcloud.com/this-is-american ... k-anscombe

[Lizard]

I wonder if part of the problem is that Canada has so far been happy to be good enough to qualify for the RWC, which it has done every time, even if it is then not competitive? As a result it has stagnated rather than tried to improve.

The RWC Everytimers' Club currently consists of NZ, AU, ARG, 6 nations, Canada, Japan and Romania. Canada is clearly the weakest and most likely to leave the club. Japan could be much worse and still get in due to being in the weakest regional qualifying area. Romania is in the most competitive area but is currently leading the charge to be Europe 1.

[rowan]

Yes, I've made the same observation on other threads. Qualifying presents no challenge to the tier 1 and 2 teams and even a relatively poor Canadian, Samoan or Romanian team can take its place at the big event more or less for granted. It should never have expanded beyond 16 teams, and the qualifying tournament should have continued to include the majority of the teams. The problem is that the established members of the core committee have such a stranglehold on administration that they were able to put their own interests first - to the obvious detriment of the tournament itself.

On another note, Anscombe is Canada's second Kiwi coach in succession, I believe; and they must have figured out by now that this is not a magic cure-all for their problems. Better to invest the money in local infrastructure. It's not that the Canadian Rugby Union is so cash-strapped, but that it has decided to put it into areas that are simply not helping the senior men's team. We can see improvements in 7s and women's rugby due to increased attention in those departments, but when your senior men's team is being humiliated on the international stage that's the worst possible advertisement for the game.

[rowan]

That was quick! Obviously they were seeking a miracle-worker

Mark Anscombe is out as head coach of the Canadian men’s rugby team.

The New Zealander lasted just over a year in the job; he was hired in March 2016.

On top of a review by Rugby Canada which found a new coach was needed following a disastrous June campaign, a source close to the situation told The Province most of the senior members on the team asked for his resignation and that he had lost the dressing room.

Anscombe was hired to replace Kieran Crowley, who had resigned in January 2016 after eight years in charge. Crowley had received a lukewarm endorsement by Rugby Canada leadership following the 2015 Rugby World Cup; Crowley had also landed a coaching offer in Italy.

Under Anscombe, Canada won just twice, against Russia in June 2016 and against Chile last Feburary. There was a draw with the USA in the first leg of the Rugby World Cup Qualifying series against the USA in June, but the Canadians slumped to a devastating loss in the second leg, missing out on the first Americas qualifying spot for the first time ever.


There were a series of narrow losses during his tenure — to Italy, Romania and Samoa — which might have painted a different picture of his tenure, but in a results-based business, he came up short. He was hired to lead the Canadians to the 2019 Rugby World Cup and while some argued the pool which a win over the USA would have landed them actually wasn’t the best possible outcome, the fact remains his squad didn’t look good in the process.

On top of the loss to the Americans, there was a disastrous Americas Rugby Championship last winter, where the Canadians suffered a first-ever loss to Brazil as well as a first loss to Uruguay in 15 years.

In a statement, Rugby Canada general manager of rugby operations and performance Jim Dixon thanked Anscombe for his work, but said a review conducted after the June losses led to the current conclusion: Anscombe had to go.

“It is very apparent to all in the Canadian rugby community that in order for our men’s fifteens team to be a successful and respected program we must continue to drive a culture of excellence, commitment and discipline. This goes for every level of the game. As a collective community we must address the gaps in our system and strive to provide our young players with the best possible environment to excel in the game, and we have a lot of work to do in this regard. I am 100 per cent confident the national senior men’s fifteens program staff, and most importantly the players, will respond to the challenge in front of them. The program will recommence in September with new resources in place to support them,” Dixon said in the statement.

Anscombe was hired after a broad search which yielded a large number of candidates.

It was a somewhat surprising choice, given Anscombe had a controversial departure from his last coaching job, with Ulster in Ireland. He was also accused in 2012 of sending a racist text to countryman Pat Lam.

But on the other hand, Anscombe did have very good coaching results with both Auckland in New Zealand and then with Ulster.

“(Anscombe) has an understanding of the current, modern rugby environment,” Dixon said at the time of his hiring, expressing a belief that Anscombe was the right choice to build a new spirit among the players, and a new program which would ultimately rediscover a winning brand of rugby.

But the ship didn’t turn around. Anscombe repeatedly spoke of the challenges involved in putting together his team, given the thin number of Canadians players in overseas professional ranks and the general standard of amateur rugby in Canada. A permanent training group was set up in Victoria, but the program was underpowered for much of the year, with Anscombe absent for long stretches and direct leadership of the program falling on Anscombe’s Vancouver Island-based assistants. (Mike Shelley is set to lead the centralized program, beginning next month.)

Eyes will now fall on Dixon and company, who clearly missed on the hiring of Anscombe. They may argue otherwise, but the fact is, they’re letting go a coach just one year into what was supposed to be a four-year term.

Canada’s next round of Rugby World Cup qualifying goes early next year against Uruguay; before that there is a series for domestic-based players in South America, and then the senior men’s games in November.

http://theprovince.com/sports/rugby/rug ... mens-coach

[Puja]

Not entirely sure who they think they're going to get in to replace him.

Puja

[rowan]

I've seen this kind of thing so many times. Samoa are now talking about replacing Alama Ieremaia because they finished bottom of the Pacific RWQ qualifiers. But their admin is a mess - and that's the real problem. Well-run unions seem to be able to just produce winning coaches out of nowhere, whereas poorly-run unions will never be anything but a graveyard for them.

[rowan]

Angry Anscombe

Mark Anscombe's tenure as Canadian men's rugby coach ended abruptly Thursday when the New Zealander was fired after just 16 months on the job.

Rugby Canada said the move came after an "extensive review" of the national men's 15s program in the wake of Canada stumbling at the first hurdle of World Cup qualifying.

Anscombe, while not surprised, reacted to the news with disappointment and anger.

"At the end of the day, the team is only the product of a system and the system is [broken]," he said in an interview Thursday. "And no one's doing anything to improve it.

"What are we doing in this country to help the athlete? And the answer is absolutely nothing."

A straight shooter, he has consistently argued Canada is up against it in the rugby world because too many of its athletes are not playing at a high enough level and are not conditioned to compete on the international scene.

Blunt message

It was a blunt message that likely did no go down well with the players in question.

The Canadian men, currently ranked 23rd in the world, lost to the 17th-ranked U.S. in a two-game aggregate series, tying the Eagles 28-28 in Hamilton on June 24 before falling 52-16 in San Diego on July 1.

"It is very apparent to all in the Canadian rugby community that in order for our men's 15s team to be a successful and respected program we must continue to drive a culture of excellence, commitment and discipline," Jim Dixon, Rugby Canada's GM of rugby operations and performance, said in a statement announcing the firing.

"This goes for every level of the game. As a collective community we must address the gaps in our system and strive to provide our young players with the best possible environment to excel in the game, and we have a lot of work to do in this regard."

Challenges ahead

Canada has another chance to qualify, via a playoff with No. 18 Uruguay early next year with the loser relegated to a world repechage.

Changing horse in mid-stream would seem a questionable strategy — Anscombe was under contract through the 2019 World Cup. The two Rugby Canada executives will have more to say Friday in a media conference call.

Getting to the World Cup qualification is crucial to the men's program, with much needed funds from World Rugby accompanying qualification. Canada has never failed to qualify.

In the same statement, Rugby Canada CEO Allen Vansen said there will be a global search for a new coach.

"Fulfilling this important role is critical for Rugby Canada and we will take the necessary time to find the right candidate," Vansen said.

Anscombe's test record as coach was 2-11-1 but it can be argued that he never got to field his strongest team because of injuries and club commitments.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/rugby/mark-ans ... ign=buffer

[rowan]

Anscombe refuses to go quietly as Canada revamps men's program:

TORONTO — Having canned its men’s national team coach, Rugby Canada is now embarking on a makeover midway through a World Cup qualification campaign.

The review which resulted in Thursday’s firing of New Zealand’s Mark Anscombe just 16 months into the job, calls for the hiring of a high-performance director, an academy/Canada ‘A’ coach and more technical staff as well as use of a sports psychologist.

Story continues here: http://theprovince.com/sports/rugby/rug ... ring-coach

[rowan]

Some good news at last!

The New Zealand Maori All Blacks will play against Canada on November 4th at the B.C. Place Stadium.

The Canadians are then scheduled to embark on a tour to Europe, where they will face Georgia, Spain, and Fiji.

https://www.ruck.co.uk/maori-blacks-goi ... -november/

[rowan]

Question is, who's going to be coaching Canada? I've heard Al Charron's name being mentioned; not that he has any coaching credentials to speak of . . .

[rowan]

Little doco on British Columbia here, Canadian rugby's heartland:

[rowan]

Wolfpack v Ontario live here:

FT 22-45