Trying to get a professional career is not an easy decision for many Canadian players, who are often divided between the passion for their sport and the need to make a living.
Canucks coach Kingseley Jones hopes that making that decision will be easier and easier thanks to the Americas Combine program, which gives players an example of what a professional athlete's life is like.
The Americas Combine is part of the World Rugby initiatives for high performance and offers players from North and South America a full week of training in which their skills and physical capacity are tested as well as the dispute of a match. The program also organizes courses for coaches and referees.
The coaches of the teams choose which players to send to the Combine both for vacant places in the concentration and in the positions they want to develop in their teams. In the case of Canada, they are players who alternate their training with their studies.
Two players who went through the program were the backs Will Kelly and Josh Thiels, both multi-functional, since they can play opening, center or fullback, positions that Canada suffers from.
Although the Combine needs to develop, Jones says that, in its beginnings it has already been helpful for the Canadian team: "Without this I don't know where we would be. Right now it's a lifesaver. It's in diapers, but if it doesn't continue it's unreal to think we can stay among the top 20 teams in the world."
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