Four Ulster age grade teams went head to head with their counterparts from Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, starting at Newforge Country Club and finishing at Malone RFC. 

The Ontario Blues program is the high performance representative program for male and female rugby players in Ontario. Rugby Ontario is represented at the provincial level by the Ontario Blues.

The program includes representative teams from Under-16 to Senior in both Women’s and Men’s Fifteens and Under-18 Men’s and Women’s Sevens. Specifically, the program is designed to develop and showcase rugby players for Canadian representative national teams.

Tour Details Here

The results from the day’s matches are shown below:

The Canadian visitors got off to a good start with comprehensive victories over the newly formed Ulster U16 and U17 Club Select sides. 

It was a tough afternoon for the Club players, who have had limited time to play together as a team, but, to their credit, both Ulster sides finished their games strongly and the experience will focus the players for future outings. 

As expected, the Ulster Schools side, despite missing quite a few players from their midweek tour, was a different prospect, and I must admit they put in an impressive display throughout. 

The Women’s U18 sides finished off the day’s proceedings and the Ulster girls put in a good performance in a physically challenging encounter. It was a young Ulster side, missing four or five of their key players and their performance throughout, particularly in defence was commendable. 

The Canadian tourists will be pleased to have finished the day with three wins in the bank and they generally looked to play a powerful and pacy brand of rugby. They certainly had a few fliers at U16 and U17 level. 

There is a second round of age grade matches on Wednesday when Ulster Schools U16 and Ulster Club U17 and U18 take on their Ontario counterparts at UUJ. The first match kicks off at 1 pm.

Ulster U18 Girls Select get a second outing, playing the Ontario Blues U18 Girls, also at Jordanstown, with this game kicking off at 6 pm. 

We’ve extensive galleries from all four of Saturday’s games, just click on the respective slide below. 

Big shout out to Bob Given Photography and Beth Cregan for the pictures and Vicky Irwin for the Social Media updates. 

Match Galleries

Ontario Blues U16 77 Ulster U16 Clubs Select 7

Ontario Blues U17 35 Ulster U17 Clubs Select 7

Ontario Blues U18 0 Ulster U18 Schools Select 54

Ontario Blues U18 Girls 34 Ulster U18 Girls Select 0