VANCOUVER — After opening pool play with a pair of losses at BC Place on Saturday, Canada’s women won’t be playing for a medal at this weekend’s HSBC SVNS stop in Vancouver.
Coming into the tournament ranked fifth in the eight-team standings of the rugby circuit with 48 points, Canada dropped its opening game of pool play to the third-ranked United States (54 points) by a score of 40-7.
“Obviously, we wanted to come out stronger against our big rivals, USA,” said Florence Symonds, one of four players on Vancouver’s roster enjoying a homecoming after playing collegiately at the University of British Columbia. “I think that we didn’t start very strong against them.”
Symonds returned to national team action on Saturday for the first time since playing through a medial collateral injury on her way to a silver medal at last September’s Rugby World Cup. Keyara Wardley, Piper Logan and Chloe Daniels also returned to international action for the first time this season.
“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.”
In her first match back with the national team since winning silver at the Paris Olympics in 2024, Wardley scored Canada’s only try against the Americans, early in the second half. Su Adegoke scored a first-half hat trick with three tries for the U.S. team.
In their second match of the day against second-place Australia (74 points), Canada fell 26-12. North Vancouver’s Savannah Bauder and Kennedi Stevenson of Glen Williams, Ont., scored tries for Canada.
Canadian coach Jocelyne 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 their final match of pool play on Saturday night, Canada will face 0-2 Fiji, ranked seventh with 40 points, to determine the seeding for Sunday’s matches, where they’ll look to add as many points as possible to their total. Japan and Great Britain are the lower-ranked teams from Pool A that will compete in the fifth-through-eighth playoffs, as all eight teams on the men’s and women’s sides play for seeding on Sunday.
Australia and the United States have secured the Pool B playoff positions with wins in their first two games, while New Zealand and France went 2-0 in Pool A competition to secure playoff spots.
In Pool A, New Zealand and France advance to the playoffs both winning their first two games.
In a new format for 2026, HSBC SVNS has been cut from 12 down to eight teams for the first seven 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 eight 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.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 7, 2026.
Carol Schram, The Canadian Press
