Steve Meehan is from Australia. The question is whether he can get back there in 2027.
The person Langford-based Rugby Canada selected Friday to coach the men’s XVs national team will have to hit the pitch running as qualifying play for the 2027 World Cup in Oz begins next year.
“This is an exciting opportunity to be part of the next chapter for Canada’s rugby team and help guide the program into the future,” Meehan said in a statement.
“I know Canada is a proud rugby country with a deeply passionate rugby community, and I look forward to start meeting coaches and players around the country. I see great potential in the players and I look forward to the role I can play to help grow the team and our sport across Canada.”
Meehan will have plenty of advice coming his way as he replaces Sooke-resident and former Welsh international Kingsley Jones, who stepped down this month after seven years of coaching the national team. Jones got Canada to the 2019 World Cup in Japan but was unable to qualify Canada for the 2023 World Cup in France, the first time Canada has missed playing in the World Cup after appearing in all nine previous editions, as nations such as the U.S., Uruguay and Chile supplanted Canada in the Americas region and the likes of Romania, Portugal and Spain overseas.
Canadian legend Hans de Goede of Victoria, twice named to the all-world XV and who captained Canada in the first World Cup, sees a gap in the nation that needs to be addressed.
“We used to have club sides, leading to regional representative sides such as the Island Crimson Tide, leading to inter-provincial play for B.C. and those used to be important roots,” said de Goede.
He is now a member of the Canadian Rugby Foundation, a support group for the sport across the country, that is trying to revive representative inter-regional teams and competitions: “We believe there is talent out there and it’s a matter of identifying that talent,” said de Goede.
John MacMillan of Victoria co-coached the Canadian U-23 team and was former national team assistant coach during the era in which Canada was a consistent World Cup qualifier and reliable second-tier nation before the recent slide to the third tier.
“Things that should have been done 10-15 years ago weren’t done and it has changed dramatically for the worse,” said MacMillan.
He cited “a disintegration of the club level” as one of the reasons and said it will take many minds and many hands to fix the fall: “There is a lot of expertise on the sidelines that is not currently in the program and we need to activate all the resources we can in a country with such a vast geography. We need a significant group effort.”
The U.S.-based Major League Rugby is giving Canadian players a chance to play pro on the continent but it hasn’t proved to be the panacea some in Canadian rugby thought it would be. The Canadian men’s rugby team is struggling while the NBA-dominated men’s national basketball team placed fifth in the 2024 Paris Olympics and the men’s national soccer team of European and MLS pros made the Copa America semifinals this year en route to co-hosting the 2026 World Cup.
MacMillan now heads 94 Forward, the legacy fund from the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games that provides support for a wide variety of sports, and that has allowed him to take a wider view across the national sports spectrum: “They are [finding] good athletes in other Canadian sports,” he noted.
The women’s side of national rugby is booming with Canada winning silver in sevens at the 2024 Paris Olympics and ranked No. 2 in the world in XVs. The Canadian rugby men, meanwhile, reached the quarter-finals of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in sevens but have now fallen out of the main group of World Series core nations. Canada is currently ranked No. 23 in the world in men’s XVs and is 14-34 in Test matches over the past seven years, and has lost its last five Tests, and 10 of its last 12. That is the task facing Meehan as he takes the XVs helm.
Rugby Canada said its search was “wide and expansive” and more than 150 coaches were evaluated before selecting Meehan, who coached Bath of the English Premier League to the European Challenge Cup and has been on the bench with French Top 14 teams Stade France and Toulon as well as Western Force and Queensland Reds in Australia’s Super Rugby. The native of Brisbane was also head coach of the defunct Toronto Arrows of MLR so has a base knowledge of the Canadian players available to him.
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