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Conor Keys has signed his first overseas professional contract. The 6’6″ (1.98m) second row will play for Rotherham Titans in the 2018-19 season. Keys departs Canada having played for the University of Victoria in the CDI Premier League and the Atlantic Rock in the Canadian Rugby Championship.
Hailing from Stittsville, Ontario, Keys began his rugby career as a 10-year-old with Barrhaven Scottish and also played for the newly renamed Ottawa Ospreys. He was selected to the Canada u20 side in 2016 and graduated to senior honors the following year in the Americas Rugby Championship, making his test debut against Chile.
Keys was most recently part of Canada’s squad in the June test series and now has 9 caps to his name. The 22-year-old will join up with his new club at the conclusion of Canada’s two-match tour of France that will start with a match against Castres Olympique tomorrow.
Rotherham will play in National One, the English third division, after being relegated from the RFU Championship last season. A Premiership team as recently as 2003-04, this will be their first season as a third tier side since 1995-96.
The club has assembled a strong squad for the coming season with the intention of winning immediate promotion back to the Championship. Chilean flanker Anton Petrowitsch was a high-profile addition earlier this summer and they recently signed a trio of German internationals – prop Antony Dickinson, hooker Mark Fairhurst, and loose forward Luis Ball – all of whom could be opposite Keys in the World Cup Repechage qualifiers in November.
