Canada on Edmonton soil Saturday for start of international men’s rugby series

Two players on Canada's rugby squad who grew up in Edmonton are excited to be in town for an international tournament.

A second Canadian men’s national team is hitting the pitch on Saturday.

No, not in Houston. That’s the soccer team.

The country’s rugby squad is slated to stage a World Rugby Nations Cup match that day in Edmonton.

Spain is Canada’s opponent for the 7 p.m. start at Clarke Stadium. The match is the first of three slated for the central venue next door to Commonwealth Stadium and the recreation centre. Clarke will also play host to two matches on July 11: Tonga faces Spain at 3:45 p.m. that day, followed by Canada against Portugal at 7 p.m.

All the matches are a part of the Nations Cup’s Southern Americas-Pacific Series, which is being staged at sites in North and South America Saturday through July 18, the day Canada faces Zimbabwe in Winnipeg.

Canadian team member Dewald Kotze, who hails from Alberta and started playing the sport with the Druids rugby club in Sherwood Park, said Friday as he and his teammates prepared for Saturday’s match that he finds it exciting to “get more competition” against other national teams.

“I think it’s a good step towards us going up in the rankings and just continuing to improve year by year,” Kotze, who plays hooker, told media.

Canadian captain Andrew Quattri said getting exposure to other teams is important to their own development.

“Playing teams that have a little bit more finesse, that are a little bit tougher through their forwards, carry a lot of forward carries, it’s important because you’ve got to change the way you play (and) the way you defend,” he said.

Run by World Rugby, the global governing body of the sport, the 12-team, second-tier Nations Cup series runs concurrently to the top-tier Nations Championship. Both are slated to be held every two years.

Both international rugby union competitions are new this year.

In the Nations Cup series, teams are divided into two pools. Canada is a member of the Americas-Pacific pool that also includes Chile, Samoa, Tonga, the United States and Uruguay.

Each team plays the members of the other pool (Europe-Africa-Asia, which includes Portugal and Spain) once. The second leg of the Nations Cup competition is slated to be held in November, when the remaining matches will be played at venues in Europe and Asia.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Curtis Goodrum