Rugby Canada coaches scouring other sports to add to sevens talent pool

TORONTO — With Montreal Alouettes defensive back Tevaughn Campbell slated to come on board after the CFL season and a space open for Adam Zaruba should he quit his NFL dream, the Canadian men’s rugby sevens team already has football talent on its roster.

Coach Damian McGrath wants more. And he’s ready to scour talent from basketball, track and field and other sports to enrich Canadian rugby.

“There’s a lot of doom and gloom around rugby in Canada with some of the 15s results,” said McGrath. “And I don’t think it’s because we haven’t got the players … There’s some fantastic talent out there.

“The more I go around Canada, the more excited I get. There’s lots of talented players,” added the English coach, “It’s how we get them into the (rugby) system.”

Rugby Canada held a Toronto combine last Sunday for a dozen football players, some of whom were CFL draft picks who were subsequently cut. More tryouts are planned for the future with a goal of harvesting players with potential from other sports and then sharpening their rugby skills.

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Four players were targeted after being seen on video. Others were invited after being scouted by staff from the women’s sevens side, which has a full-time academy in Ontario.

One player from the combine has already won a spot on tour with the developmental Maple Leafs sevens side in early 2018.

“I wanted to get it started as soon as possible because I saw some clips from players who were cut after the CFL draft,” said McGrath. “Some of them have such great transferable skills — the wide receivers, the kick returners. I’ve always been excited about wanting to see them close-up in a rugby-type situation.” 

Part of the challenge is letting elite athletes know what rugby sevens can offer, from a trip to the Olympics to competitions around the globe.

McGrath calls Sunday’s initial combine “a tentative step into the unknown.”

Unknown because the development path to the centralized roster of senior sevens players is currently up in the air because of lack of funds.

The men’s sevens squad, which got $850,000 in Own The Podium funding in 2016-17, isn’t getting anything in fiscal 2017-18 after failing to qualify for the Rio Olympics. Rugby Canada will soon meet with OTP officials in an attempt to win some of that funding back.

“Our senior group more or less picked itself all the time (last season),” said McGrath. “I need to build a bigger group and I need to have young people and new players pushing from within to lift the level of players across the board.

“There is such a wealth of talent out there and we need them in the system. And I see that OTP money as our way to work on that next generation of players.”

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Neil Davidson, The Canadian Press