ON THE SHELF?
Transplanted Edmontonian goes down in practice with national rugby team
Jen Kish, captain of Canada’s women’s rugby sevens squad from 2012 to 2016, captured an Olympic bronze medal in Rio, won a silver medal at the Rugby Sevens Worlds in 2013 and seized gold at the 2015 Pan-Am Games.
The incredibly inked Edmonton aerialist and defender, who began playing the sport in Grade 10 at W.P. Wagner and will go into the Edmonton Sports Hall of Fame next week, not once got to play in Commonwealth Stadium.
Gordon McRorie, on the other hand, was born in Scotland, and after a brief visit here in 2014, became an Edmontonian in 2016. He was here Monday to begin preparation to be in the lineup Saturday night for Canada against world fifth-ranked Scotland in a test match.
But there was breaking news with the Team Canada arrival in Edmonton to begin training for the Saturday game.
OK, maybe not “breaking.” Maybe “spraining.” Or “tweaking.”
It just isn’t working out with Edmonton rugby players to perform in the big stadium with 10,000 or 12,000 fans.
McRorie was carried off the field with an injury on the first day of practice with the team in Edmonton.
In truth, it would have been a far bigger deal for McRorie that he was going to be playing against Scotland than that he was going to be playing in Commonwealth Stadium.
But now it’s going to be neither.
But after what happened when Canada took to the Ellerslie grounds for practice Monday afternoon, Kish may have to come out of retirement if there’s going to be a local angle to the game.
McRorie was probably going to end up playing second banana to Kish this week anyway.
It was announced Monday that Mayor Don Iveson was to declare June 7th as Jen Kish Day in Edmonton.
Indeed, he might as well named it Jen Kish Week in Edmonton as well now, too.
Having never had the chance to be celebrated in her hometown through her recent retirement as Canadian Olympic team captain, Kish will be celebrated at her old high school Wednesday at 11:30 a.m.
Gareth Rees, the World Rugby and Canadian Sport Hall of Famer will be there to make a special presentation and she’ll be joined by today’s J.P. Wagner athletes and student body, members of the Edmonton Rugby Union and Edmonton Rockers rugby team.
Then they’ll do it all over again at halftime of the Saturday evening test match.
On June 11, Kish will be inducted into the Edmonton Sports Hall of Fame.
McRorie, who has 33 test caps and 218 points so far playing for Canada, went down in practice and tweaked an ankle and will likely be listed as doubtful for Saturday night now, especially considering it’s effectively an exhibition game.
Which is too bad because there’s a lot of bad blood involved between these two teams as a result of the last time they met.
Born in Stirling, Scotland, the Team Canada scrum half/fly half grew up with plaid blood flowing through his veins.
McRorie, apparently, is a pretty good story.
After his third year attending Stirling University, as he worked his way through the ranks playing rugby, he decided to join a couple of buddies sightseeing in the U.S. and Canada.
The others went home while McRorie was invited to Edmonton to play some rugby and got the Canadian bug.
After returning to Scotland for his fourth year of university, he returned to the provincial capital for more.
Having that combination of Scotland and Canada in him it would have been interesting to have him experience the tug-o-war involved in the rematch from the last meeting of the two teams in 2014 in Toronto.
It was a hugely controversial match with Canada generally being viewed as having been robbed of what would have been an amazing victory by a red card in the 78th minute.
When you consider Scotland is currently ranked fifth in the world and Canada 21st and needing to use this game to open a summer schedule to build to a repechage tournament in November for the last remaining berth in the World Cup, you know how big an upset it might have been.
McRorie, who made his debut for Canada in 2014 and was part of the Canadian squad at the 2015 World Cup, would have been the perfect player to speak to all of that.
But, apparently suffering his lower body injury affected his ability to talk and he wasn’t made available for interview by Rugby Canada.
If he doesn’t get to play, hopefully, Rugby Canada will have McRorie escort Kish to the field at half time for the presentations and to watch the special video being planned for her so he can at least wave to the crowd.