![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/indicator-big.gif\")
<\/p>\nThey 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.<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Vancouver\u2019s 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\u2019s Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re learning throughout the day,\u201d Symonds said. \u201cThis group hasn\u2019t played together for a really long time, so we\u2019re 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\u2019s just our goal moving forward \u2014 keep growing and keep learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wardley scored Canada\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Barrieau described her team\u2019s first two matches as \u201csuper gritty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so proud of their performance,\u201d she said. \u201cBut for sure, it\u2019s a little bit heartbreaking and disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the medal competition on the women\u2019s side, Top-ranked New Zealand will face the United States in the first semifinal, followed by Australia against France.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s and women\u2019s teams for three SVNS World Championship events, starting in Hong Kong on Apr. 17.<\/p>\n
After being relegated in 2024, Canada\u2019s men are not playing on the elite rugby tour, but earned promotion to SVNS 2 in January. This weekend in Vancouver, they\u2019re taking part in a three-team invitational tournament, the Teck Tri-Nations Challenge. <\/p>\n
On Saturday they went 2-0 with a 28-26 win over Japan and a 7-0 victory over Chile. They\u2019ll play the same two teams on Sunday as part of a double round-robin format.<\/p>\n
In the men\u2019s 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\u2019s standings, South Africa and Fiji, respectively.<\/p>\n
New Zealand will play Argentina and France meets Great Britain in the semifinals to determine the fifth through eighth-place finishers.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 7, 2026.<\/p>\n
Carol Schram, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They opened with a 40-7 loss to the third-ranked United States, then fell 26-12 to second-ranked Australia before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-521991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}