When Canada women’s rugby sevens team won Olympic bronze at Rio 2016, two young players were watching intently as the drama unfolded on TV.
The North American nation had been beaten soundly by Team GB 22-0 in the group stages, but just a day later, in the bronze-medal match, the results were reversed with the Maple Leafs coming out on top 33-10.
“I remember watching it on my TV as they lost to GB in pool play and then all celebrating after coming back and beating them in the bronze (medal match),” Olivia Apps told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview. “It was amazing.”
The moment has stayed with the Toronto native.
“That’s something that I’ve always thought about when I’m playing in big matches.”
Days later, her side was set to take on New Zealand in the semi-final of the Women’s Rugby World Cup in a rivalry between the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked women’s rugby XV nations in the world.
The Black Ferns, the reigning world and Olympic champions, had not lost a Rugby World Cup knockout game since 1991, so Canada had their work cut out.
“Two years ago we beat them, and this past year we drew,” fullback Julia Schell told us of how they approached the knockout game. “I think New Zealand is a team that can throw everything in the kitchen sink at you, and I think we can play a similar way sometimes.”
Sure enough, the Canadian’s took the game to the Kiwis, coming out winners, 34-19.
Now, another ‘big game’ looms as Canada take on the hosts, England – one of the nations that make up Team GB at an Olympic Games – in an epic showdown on Saturday 27 September in front of a sell-out crowd of 80,000 people at Twickenham Stadium.
In a delicious twist, that’s the home of England rugby.
Yet Schell and Apps will likely be withdrawing from the memory bank of Rio 2016 come the big showdown, which is preceded by the third-fourth play-off between New Zealand and France in quite the double header.
“(The Rio bronze) very much inspired me to pursue the highest level of rugby I could play,” said Schell, who scored six tries in the 65–7 result against Fiji in Canada’s first game of the 2025 tournament, “and I’ve been lucky enough to be mentored by some of those athletes and train with some of them and I think they just put, especially Canadian sevens, really on the map, so that was definitely a big memory of mine.”
Team GB have yet to make the Olympic podium, coming fourth twice, while Canada won their second medal, silver to New Zealand’s gold, at the most recent Games at Paris 2024.
England, however, have had more success at the World Cups for 15s rugby, claiming first or second in eight of the nine editions held so far. The lone absence from the top two in the tournament, dominated by six-time winners New Zealand, was still a third-place finish.
Champions in 1994 and 2014, the latter was a win against, well, Canada, who have broken into the top three just that once, finishing in the agonising fourth place, four times.
So, it’s all to play for, but both players acknowledge that this tournament, hosted in various regions across England yet feeling like a home tournament for eight of the starting XV for Canada who play in the Premiership Women’s Rugby league for English sides, has been about more than the winning.