Americas Rugby News Rugby news from across the Americas!
Alistair Clark will start at openside flank in the only change to the Canadian lineup for Saturday’s North American derby against the US Eagles in round two of the Americas Rugby Championship at Dell Diamond in Austin, Texas. The Ontario Blues stalwart made quite a splash in his test debut against Uruguay, scoring his first try just moments after joining the fray as a replacement. Clark replaces injured Kyle Gilmour, with Lucas Rumball moving to his more accustomed blindside flank role to accommodate his Blues teammate.
UVic Vikes second row Liam Chisholm takes up the vacancy among the reserves, one of seven uncapped players present after Ratier opted to use only two substitutes in the win over Uruguay in Langford. Reserve loosehead Djustice Sears-Duru was one of those, and remains the only player on the bench with test experience. Starting scrumhalf Gordon McRorie is retained after gaining his permanent residency in the past week allowing him to travel to the three away matches with the team.
Canada maintains an advantage with 38 wins and one draw from 54 previous test matches against the Eagles, but have lost three in a row and will be hoping to put an end to a skid that dates back to August of 2013. The match kicks off at 6pm local, 7pm EST, 4pm PST, and will be broadcast live on ESPN3, with a stream set to be available for Canadian viewers via the USA Rugby site.
A World Rugby u20 Trophy tournament qualifier match will be played by the respective u20 sides of the two countries immediately following, also to be streamed from the USA Rugby site.
The Eagles have not confirmed their lineup at the time of writing.
CANADA
1 Hubert Buydens (capt.) 2 Ray Barkwill 3 Jake Ilnicki 4 Paul Ciulini 5 Callum Morrison 6 Lucas Rumball 7 Alistair Clark 8 Clay Panga 9 Gordon McRorie 10 Gradyn Bowd 11 Dan Moor 12 Nick Blevins 13 Mozac Samson 14 Phil Mackenzie 15 Patrick Parfrey
16 Eric Howard 17 Djustice Sears-Duru 18 Rob Brouwer 19 Kyle Baillie 20 Liam Chisholm 21 Mike Hamson 22 Andrew Ferguson 23 Duncan Maguire
