The Rock are ready to roll
Rugby squad kicks off new season with first game in new Eastern Canadian circuit
There will be familiar faces on the Swilers turf today as the Newfoundland Rock opens a new Rugby Canada season with a game against the New Brunswick Black Spruce.
It’s the Rock’s first game in the new Eastern Canadian Super League, which is a prelude to the 2018 Canadian Rugby Championship that will be contested in August.
For the past number of years, the CRC has been reduced to quite literally only a handful of games for each of the four regional teams — B.C. Bears, Prairie Wolf Pack, Ontario Blues and Atlantic Rock.
Last year and in 2016, the Rock played only four games. The 2015 CRC campaign was but a one-weekend tournament, because of the Rugby World Cup.
This year, however, based on the concept of the six teams in Eastern Canada feeding into the two regional CRC teams (Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and the Ottawa area into the Rock) and the remainder of Ontario into the Blues’ squad, a sixteam Eastern Canadian Super League has been launched.
Following the Eastern Canadian final weekend July 13-15 in Montreal, the two regional Rock and Blues squads will be selected to start play in the CRC beginning Aug. 4 when those teams clash in Montreal.
Aside from one-weekend Atlantic championship one-offs, Saturday’s game marks the first time since 2008 the Newfoundland Rock has fielded a team in Super League play.
The Rock won the Mactier Cup as Rugby Canada Super League champions that season, and captured the coveted trophy again in 2010 as the Atlantic Rock in the newly-named CRC.
However, the St. John’s-based team hasn’t won since.
But there’s a renewed enthusiasm with the Eastern Canadian circuit, if only because it gives the players more games.
In addition to today’s game set for 3 p.m. at Swilers, the Rock play again June 9 (vs Nova Scotia Keltics at Swilers) and two games towards the end of the month in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Factor in semifinals and final, if they get that far, the Rock’s players will have six games under their belts, with possibly another four in CRC play.
“Ultimately,” said Morgan Lovell, one of the Newfoundland Rock’s coaches, “the aim is to develop more qualified rugby players, to have more players playing at a high level beyond club rugby.
“The biggest challenge we faced the past couple of years was just playing a single weekend. There’s a lot of commitment which goes into this — we’ve been training twice a week since February, in addition to the players’ own strength and conditioning — and to do all that for only a single weekend, well, it’s hard to train for a long period of time for one weekend of rugby.
“The commitment was pretty good, but not good enough to put us over the top. We needed to create more competition, more fixtures.”
Lovell is co-coaching the Rock with Simon Blacks, with Pat Parfrey overseeing things as the director of operations.
Last year, the 1-3 Rock lost to the Wolf Pack 41-19 in the bronze-medal game, and that result came on the heels of a 33-29 Rock win over the Prairie side in the round-robin.
Virtually all of the Newfoundland players who toiled on the Atlantic side last season are back, with the exception of Patrick Parfrey, who is not available because of his national team duties.
It’s hoped Parfrey will be available to the Rock for the playoffs.
Fullback Patrick Mcnicholas returns and looks to put an injury-plagued 2017 campaign behind him. Mcnicholas is the team’s vice-captain.
The captaincy will be held by veteran Brad Lester, who’s been knocking heads on the rugby scene for some 15 years.
“He’s not the most vocal guy,” said Lovell, himself a veteran of seven years as a Rock player, “but everyone respects him.
“He’s the kind of guy who leads by example. He makes tackles, does the stuff that you appreciate as a player.”
Ageless veteran Frank Walsh, now 41, is back for another round of the rugby wars, though his playing time might be reduced a bit. Not that Walsh’s spot on the roster is based purely on sentimentality.
“He’s in pretty good physical condition,” Lovell said. “He’s probably the fittest he’s been in the last four or five years.
“I don’t know how he keeps doing it. I think he wants to play for Newfoundland one year longer than (Hall of Famer) Rod Snow.
“Props,” Lovell added with a chuckle, “are weird like that.”
Now that the players can expect more action this season, Lovell sees a change in attitude at practice.
“My personal opinion is we were not prepared the past couple of years,” he said. “The buy-in was not as it should have been.
“Now the talk is don’t expect to wear a Newfoundland jersey, but rather it’s something you have to earn. In the past, we haven’t had to make too many tough decisions. It’s different
this year.”
Since their CRC win in 2010, the Blues have won five championships, with the Wolf Pack and Bears one each. B.C. copped the Mactier Cup last season.
“I think since we last won, we kind of let our guard down a little bit,” Lovell said. “This year, we see a noticeable change in attitude.”