The Canadian men began their climb back up the rugby sevens ladder Friday with a 29-0 victory over Guyana at the Rugby Americas North (RAN) Sevens in Trinidad.
Relegated from the elite HSBC SVNS circuit in June, the Canadians need to win the RAN 7s in Arima, some 30 kilometres east of Port of Spain, to join World Rugby’s second-tier World Challenger Series.
The top four teams from the three-event Challenger Series will face off against the bottom four from the HSBC SVNS at the SVNS World Championships May 3-4 in Carson, Calif., in a promotion/relegation playoff.
“It’ll happen quick,” Canada coach Sean White said of the promotion push.
“We’re not really happy or satisfied being where we are,” he added. “But the other side of the coin is that we haven’t earned the opportunity to be back there (to the HSBC SVNS) yet. We can want it all we want and we can talk about it all we want but we need to do the action and earn the opportunities that we really kind of let go through our fingers last (season).”
Captain Elias Hancock scored two tries and David Richard, Thomas Isherwood and Kyle Tremblay added singles for Canada, which led 17-0 at the half Friday. Isherwood also kicked two conversions.
The Canadians complete Pool A play Saturday against Bermuda and Barbados. The Pool A winner will face the fourth-place team in Pool B (Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago) in Sunday’s quarter-final.
It was 33 C, feeling like 40, for the 1:44 p.m. local time kickoff at Larry Gomes Stadium.
Canada looked rusty at times, with at least four tries missed through handling errors or errant passes. But a win is a win, especially after a dismal 3-36-0 season that ended with a 22-14 loss to Spain with relegation on the line. It was a 29th-straight defeat.
The Canadian men, who finished eighth at the Tokyo Olympics, had been a core team on the top sevens circuit since 2012-13 and lifted the trophy in Singapore in 2017.
After being relegated, White’s team fell short in an Olympic repechage tournament in late June in Monaco, finishing fourth after losing 26-0 to eventual winner South Africa in the semi-finals. The Blitzboks went on to claim bronze in Paris.
The 13-man roster for the RAN 7s includes six players who were part of the relegation playoff roster in Madrid: Hancock, Isherwood, Richard, Cooper Coats, Josiah Morra and Matt Oworu.
Coats, Morra and Oworu joined the sevens side from the 23rd-ranked Canadian 15s team, which lost 35-27 to No. 20 Romania in Bucharest last Saturday. All three recently signed with Major League Rugby teams – Coats with NOLA Gold, Morra with the defending champion New England Free Jacks and Oworu with the Chicago Hounds.
Speedster D’Shawn Bowen returns to the sevens side for the first time since the Sydney Sevens in January 2023 while Noah Bain was last with the team at the Spain Sevens in 2022.
There are three new players – Jack Shaw, who plays in MLR for RFC LA, and Kyle Tremblay and Johnny Franklin from the Pacific Pride development academy.
White expects Shaw, a six-foot-two 205-pounder, to make his presence felt with the sevens teams. Bowen and Bain have also impressed in B.C. league play.
Former captain Phil Berna is one of the veterans who has elected to take some time off. While not retired from rugby, the 28-year-old has gone back to school.
Both Canada men’s and women’s sevens teams are now decentralized, allowing players to choose their own home base in the start to a new quadrennial. There are 18 carded players on the men’s side.
“It was really a strategic shift that we had been talking about prior to relegation and prior to anything gong into the Olympics,” White said. ‘Anyone who’s been in high-performance sport knows the added pressures. Living in Victoria there’s a financial challenge as well.”
Some players have chosen to remain in the Victoria area and are using the Rugby Canada facilities in nearby Langford.
The Canadian men are scheduled to play in an invitational men’s sevens tournament taking place at B.C. Place Stadium alongside the HSBC SVNS Vancouver stop in February.