Canada Faces Tough Qualification For 2019 Rugby World Cup

Canada has successfully qualified for every Rugby World Cup till date but their qualification for the 2019 World Cup in Japan is still not certain as the Canadian Rugby Team have to pull of wins against some good teams in order to make the cut.

Mark Anscombe, coach of the Canadian Rugby team knows it’s a tough task ahead but remains confident that his side can qualify, should they put in the hard work and play to potential.

Canada who are currently ranked 22nd in World Rugby have a qualifying series that is based on a home-and-away aggregate against the U.S Eagles who are ranked in 17th place.

Should they go down to the U.S. Eagles, they still have two more chances at redemption. The first will be a home-and- away series against Uruguay who are ranked 21. The series winner makes it to the Rugby World Cup in Japan but the loser still has another shot at qualification through the world repechage tournament.

World Rugby

Apart from playing challenging opposition during the qualifying rounds, coach Anscombe has a number of challenges that he needs to fix internally in order to get his best team on the field. Anscombe has been critical of his side’s performance in recent times as they lacked match practice and many of the players were not in great shape and some were not fit at all.

He blamed the lack of domestic competition for the condition of his players as only a few players who are part of the National squad have been drafted to overseas leagues. To put things into perspective, the mighty All Blacks can run up to 100 metres a minute whereas the Canadian team in June 2016 against a lacklustre Russian side were doing 60 metres a minute during the first 20 minutes of the game and then dropped to 40 metres a minute before falling to 25 metres a minute during the final stages of the game.

The coach also wants new faces in the squad and has been scouting new talent. He has identified a few players who he wants to have in the squad. This means that the older and experienced players might have to give way, if they don’t get themselves up to Anscombe’s standards.

In a statement, Mark Anscombe said

We keep bringing out the same old guy that we know's not good enough to play rugby at the high level but because we have to make the numbers, get the squad together, we keep throwing back names that get found out time and time again.

Anscombe believes that one of the ways to improve Rugby in Canada is to develop a competitive domestic league.