Canada calls in reinforcements
Coach Jones turns to sevens stars for help with Uruguay match looming
In preparing for this Saturday’s Rugby World Cup qualifier against Uruguay (5 p.m. kickoff, B.C. Place Stadium, TSN1) Rugby Canada head coach Kingsley Jones has pulled out all the stops.
He’s called in every healthy professional and even held the longest training camp allowed under World Rugby rules.
He’s brought in a former coaching colleague of his in Philippe Saint-Andre, who he worked with at the Sale Sharks of the Aviva Premiership. (And Saint-Andre most recently has been in charge of the French national team.)
He took the squad on a one-week trip to the U.K., where his group trained with another top English side in the London Harlequins.
And he’s called in a pair of players who are normally playing with Canada’s sevens team: Victoria’s Connor Braid and Burnaby’s Admir Cejvanovic.
Both players joined Damian McGrath’s sevens squad to start the 2017-18 season and were in his first squads of the season for tournaments in Dubai and Cape Town.
Them being in the mix for Jones’s team was always in the mix, though.
“It was always in the back of my mind,” Braid said Wednesday after a brisk training session at UBC’s rugby fields. “I did the three-month pre-season with the sevens, but I knew I’d be back with the 15s.”
Cejvanovic credits sevens as opening his eyes to how much more he was capable of when it came to fitness and strength.
“As a backrower, you’re always encouraged to have an over-thetop work rate,” he said. “When I first started at sevens, it was a shock to my system. But I quickly found I was able to recover in my low-pace running.”
He played two years of sevens in 2014-15 and 2015-16, but then switched back to 15s last season. Now he’s back in sevens, but thinks where he’s now at physically is the future of bigger players.
“The days of the bulky ball-carrier are going out the window,” he said. “Look at (South African star) Kwagga Smith. He’s everywhere, but I doubt he weighs more that 95 kilos.
“Guys may not be as big, but they’re so much stronger. They’re immensely strong and immensely fit.”
It’s a professional dimension that Jones clearly appreciates: Braid looks likely to start at fly-half with captain Phil Mack inside him at scrum half.
“He gives us a big point of change,” Jones said of his likely first-choice playmaker. “He controls the game well. He’s played test match rugby regularly at that position.
“We don’t need to have a massive game plan, we just need accuracy.”
Braid said his new coach has made their task simple: “Execute the game plan. Philly and I, just run the show.”
Mack, another longtime sevens player, said he was looking forward to reuniting with Braid, who last started at fly-half last June against Romania.
“It’s great we’ve known each other for a very long time, we’re rooming together,” Mack said. “We’ve been bouncing ideas off each other all week.”
The duo has been as good a backline as Canada has seen in a while outside of them. There’s three world-class wingers in DTH van der Merwe, Taylor Paris and Jeff Hassler available and it seems a safe bet that Jones is looking to find a way to start all three at once.
Van der Merwe has been playing at outside centre, but his preferred position has always been on the wing. Assuming Hassler goes on the other, Paris could get his first start for Canada at fullback.
“We have a lot of quality in the backline, it’s going to be tough to contain for 80 minutes,” Mack said.
If Jones does go for that starting trio, it’s a clear sign he’s going for a try-scoring focus in Saturday’s game. It’s the first leg, the second leg goes a week later in Montevideo, Uruguay.
You can understand why. Canada lost 17-13 a year ago in Punta del Este, their first loss to Uruguay since 2002.
Cejvanovic said that loss, in which he started, was as much about inexperience as anything else.
“Rugby teams most often lose because they shoot themselves in the foot. We had a lot of chances there, but we didn’t execute.”
History suggests Canada has the advantage. Recent form, maybe less so. Either way, you can see why the coach may be angling toward a go-big-or-go-home opening.