Back in December, the chances of Tyler Ardron playing for Canada again looked slim.
Seemingly forgotten by his country, the back-row forward’s focus was firmly on Castres and his Top 14 commitments. He said as much in an end-of-year interview with RugbyPass but a day after it was published, Rugby Canada’s CEO Nathan Bombrys got in touch and the wheels were put in motion for Canada’s best player to lend his weight to their latest Men’s Rugby World Cup qualification campaign, which begins in Calgary on Friday evening against the USA in the Asahi Super Dry Pacific Nations Cup.
“Credit to him (Bombrys), that’s what he did, he called me right up, and I talked to the coach right after, and the whole thing went well,” Ardron confirmed.
Now coached by Steve Meehan, an Australian with vast European experience, Canada are hoping that the failure to qualify for the 2023 World Cup – the first time they’ve not featured in the sport’s most prestigious event – is an aberration that won’t be repeated.
The return of No.8 Ardron for the first time since the last World Cup cycle, and the inclusion of another experienced pro at the highest level, lock Evan Olmstead, is a statement of the team’s intent to upset the odds and get their qualifying campaign off to the perfect start against an Eagles team ranked nine places higher in 16th.
Given the high stakes, Canada could ill afford for Ardron to continue to be a bystander, and the 34-year-old is delighted to be back involved for the first time in nearly four years.
“Now I have a slightly different vision and see things differently now that I have been back here for 10 days. It’s been awesome, I have really liked it,” Ardron told RugbyPass from Calgary.
“I guess I thought, what is my legacy going to be at the end of my career? If I’m not going to play another World Cup, or even if I am, it is important that Canada gets back there, not only for me as a player or the group that’s here, but for the future of the organisation.
“I want a young guy to have a chance that I had, and if we slip down to 25th/30th in the world, no one is ever going to get that chance.”
The years that Ardron was unavailable, partly through his own choice and partly because of choices made by others, haven’t been kind, with Canada falling out of the top 20-ranked nations after a long run of poor results under Meehan’s predecessor, Kingsley Jones. The last of his 38 caps was a low point, a 33-24 defeat to Chile, which cost them their place at the World Cup in 2023.
Even with the next tournament expanding to 24 teams, it’ll be a challenge for Canada to qualify directly through the Pacific Nations Cup this time around. The top three performing teams from Samoa, Tonga, the USA, and Canada will have their ticket to Australia stamped. As things stand, Canada are the last in the queue, having finished bottom of the PNC in 2024.
Ardron says communication between him and Meehan has been good.
“There was no pressure from him. He was like, ‘Listen, this is what I would like you to do, I would like you to be involved, here’s what I see, and we had a great conversation and a couple of after,” he revealed.
“His overall plan is to qualify for this Rugby World Cup and to put Rugby Canada in a better place than it was a year ago.
“The timing was right, the conversations were right, the vision for the future was right, and everything just came together and worked out that I could come back, and I wanted to.”