VANCOUVER — Nearly two years after winning silver at the Paris Olympics, Canada’s women’s rugby seven squad is in what head coach Jocelyne Barrieau describes as a “framing year.”
“Last year was our foundational year,” she said Saturday. “I was a new head coach and it was a new team, new dynamic, new feel. This year, we’re working on building our frame. We’re working on our processes and professional contracts and where people are. How to get them together and how to be the best we can be.”
Even from that perspective, the Day 1 results from the team’s home-soil stop in front of a boisterous, costume-clad crowd in Vancouver for the 2026 Canada Sevens tournament could have been better.
Coming into the tournament ranked fifth in the eight-team standings with 48 points, Canada dropped all three of its games in pool play on Saturday to finish last in Pool B.
They opened with a 40-7 loss to the third-ranked United States, then fell 26-12 to second-ranked Australia before dropping a 14-12 decision to No. 7 Fiji in the nightcap.
Now knowing that the best they can do this weekend is a fifth-place finish worth 12 standings points, Canada will face Japan in Sunday’s first fifth-place semifinal. The winner will go on to play the winner of the second fifth-place semifinal between Fiji and Great Britain, shortly after the losers play for seventh place later on Sunday afternoon.
One challenge for Barrieau in Vancouver was reintegrating some prominent faces into her roster after long injury absences. That list included Chloe Daniels and Keyara Wardley, who both saw their first national team action since Paris.
Vancouver’s Florence Symonds also rejoined the team for the first time since playing through a medial collateral ligament injury on her way to a silver medal at last September’s Rugby World Cup.
“I think we’re learning throughout the day,” Symonds said. “This group hasn’t played together for a really long time, so we’re just going through the process and kind of taking it game by game. Hoping that we get better and improve each game and each day. I think that’s just our goal moving forward — keep growing and keep learning.”
Wardley scored Canada’s only try against the Americans, while Savannah Bauder of North Vancouver was the only Canadian to find the end zone more than once on Saturday. She scored tries against Australia and Fiji.
Barrieau described her team’s first two matches as “super gritty.”
“I’m so proud of their performance,” she said. “But for sure, it’s a little bit heartbreaking and disappointing.”
In the medal competition on the women’s side, Top-ranked New Zealand will face the United States in the first semifinal, followed by Australia against France.
In a new format for 2026, HSBC SVNS has been cut from 12 down to eight teams for the first six events of the year. Divided into two pools of four, the top two teams from each pool advance to the playoffs, while the bottom two teams compete for fifth place.
Standings points are then awarded accordingly. The gold medallists receive 20 points; that number drops by two for each subsequent position, with the eighth-place team receiving six points.
Vancouver is the fifth tour stop of the 2026 SVNS Series. After eight teams play in New York next weekend, the pool will expand to 12 men’s and women’s teams for three SVNS World Championship events, starting in Hong Kong on Apr. 17.
After being relegated in 2024, Canada’s men are not playing on the elite rugby tour, but earned promotion to SVNS 2 in January. This weekend in Vancouver, they’re taking part in a three-team invitational tournament, the Teck Tri-Nations Challenge.
On Saturday they went 2-0 with a 28-26 win over Japan and a 7-0 victory over Chile. They’ll play the same two teams on Sunday as part of a double round-robin format.
In the men’s elite group, No. 5 Australia and No. 7 Spain punched their tickets to the medal round but will face tough semifinal competition in the top two teams in this year’s standings, South Africa and Fiji, respectively.
New Zealand will play Argentina and France meets Great Britain in the semifinals to determine the fifth through eighth-place finishers.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 7, 2026.
Carol Schram, The Canadian Press
