NOLA Gold Rugby and the Toronto Arrows open up the 2019 Major League Rugby season at 2 pm CT at Gold Stadium, 1130 Barataria Blvd, Marrero, LA. Tickets are available for the match and for those who can’t attend, the match is being broadcast on ESPN+ and on GameTV. The latter will be streamed live through the Arrows’ Facebook page and may be enjoyed amongst Arrows fans at the club’s official watch party held at Toronto’s Irish Embassy Pub & Grill.
NOLA Gold opens the season with four consecutive home matches, while the Toronto Arrows, play eight road games to begin the season followed with eight consecutive home matches from April 7-June 2.
NOLA Gold Rugby was an offensive force during the preseason with a 4-0 record. The team beat the USA RugbySouth Panthers 45-10, Stars Rugby 113-0, the Midwest Selects 74-0, and the Dallas Reds 72-0. The Toronto Arrows had two exhibition season wins over the Glendale Raptors 40-18 and the new England Freejacks 40-14. Their match on January 12 in Orchard Park, NY against RUNY was canceled due to an earlier traffic accident in Manhattan, but they did play the Canada Selects Academy on January 19 at Westshore RFC, winning 47-7.
The match between NOLA Gold Rugby and the Toronto Arrows should be an exciting one. Both teams will want to get off to a good start, especially with the Americas Rugby Championship beginning next week.
NOLA Gold Rugby
NOLA Gold Rugby has added more international experience this season. Ignacio Dotti and Nikola Bursic are away on international duty, but between Hubert Buydens, Eric Howard, Ben Tarr, Kane Thompson, Kyle Baillie, and Cam Dolan they have 173 caps. The backs also have significant international experience with capped internationals JP Eloff, Con Foley, and Tim Maupin, as well as former Super Rugby players Scott Gale and Tristan Blewett.
Toronto Arrows
Ahead of the match against NOLA Gold Rugby, the team announced earlier today that Lucas Rumball will be the captain of the team in 2019.
The Toronto Arrows have ten Canadian internationals on their squad: Brouwer (9 caps), Ciulini (8 caps), Dolezel (16 caps), Ferguson (11 caps), Keith (9 caps), Lloyd (7 caps), Moonlight (23 caps), Moor (14 caps), Rumball (26 caps), Sheppard (3 caps). With the Americas Rugby Championship about to begin, several other players are not with the team this Saturday.
The starting XV are all Canadian, except for Sam Malcolm, who is from New Zealand. Seven of the squad members played for the Canada Under-20s: Ciulini (2015), Ferguson (2012), Keith (2017), Milazzo (2016), Ng (2017), Quattrin (2016), Rumball (2014, 2015)
Squads With Player Article Links
NOLA Gold: 1 Hubert Buydens 2 Eric Howard (C) 3 Ben Tarr 4 Kane Thompson 5 Billy Stewart 6 Kyle Baille 7 Zack Stryffeler 8 Cam Dolan 9 Holden Yungert 10 Scott Gale 11 JoJo Tikoisuva 12 Cam Foley 13 Tristan Blewett 14 Tim Maupin 15 JP Eloff 16 Matt Harmon 17 Cam Falcon 18 Kevin Sullivan 19 Malcolm May 20 John Sullivan 21 Vince Jobo 22 Taylor Howden 23 Nick Feakes
Toronto Arrows: 1 Rob Brouwer 2 AJ Quattrin 3 Cole Keith 4 Mike Sheppard 5 Paul Ciulini 6 Peter Milazzo 7 John Moonlight 8 Lucas Rumball (C) 9 Andrew Ferguson 10 Sam Malcolm 11Kainoa Lloyd 12 Jamie Leveridge 13 Spencer Jones14 Dan Moor 15 Jack Evans 16 Steven Ng 17 18 Morgan Mitchell 19 Kolby Francis 20 Marcello Wainwright 21 Riley DiNardo 22 Johnny Sheridan 23 Shawn Windsor
Other Articles
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