Episode 261: Vancouver Under Review

·28 min·2 clips

Major League Rugby is replacing TMO with a referee review system and team challenges.

Canada's weekend split hard. The panel opens with Vancouver Sevens because, for Canadian rugby, this was the sevens stop that mattered most. Day one was ugly. Canada lost 7-40 to the USA, fell 12-26 against Australia, and got within two points of Fiji without getting out of the bottom of the pool. Sunday made the mood less bleak. A 19-12 win over Japan settled things down, then Canada got Fiji again and flipped the earlier loss into a 26-19 fifth-place final win. That helps, but only so much. Fifth place was a good answer after Saturday. It still was not the homecoming the panel thinks Canada would have wanted in Vancouver. The attendance talk is where the concern gets sharper. They remember the first year pulling around 40,000 to 45,000 a day and opening the upper bowl, then compare that with a flatter feeling now. The Olympic cycle is the larger headache. Paris 2024 comes in the summer, Vancouver lands the next year in late winter or early spring, and the panel wonders how sevens is supposed to keep people paying attention through that gap. They do not turn it into a simple doom take. World Rugby has moved events through New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, and Vancouver still gets talked about as one of the better attendance stops. The calendar is the hard part. Six rounds, a month between rounds four and five, then back-to-back stops like Vancouver into New York make the series tough to follow if someone is not already locked in. The championship setup muddies it too, with the sevens world championship sitting as a separate event around mid April instead of feeling like the next beat in the same rhythm. The weekend still sounds like a good time in person, and Canada's Sunday gives supporters a real result. The worry is whether Olympic curiosity can turn into regular attention when the schedule and tournament shape ask casual fans to work this hard.

As heard by us

A measured Vancouver Sevens debrief that ties Canada's results to the realities of the sevens calendar.

Le Rouge Rugby Podcast takes Vancouver Sevens as a straightforward read on where Canada stands. It starts with a rough Saturday, then moves into a better Sunday, with the opening losses to the USA, Australia, and Fiji giving the home event its edge.

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You want a frank read on Canada’s Vancouver Sevens weekend.

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