Saturday’s snowstorm has forced the Vancouver Island Rugby Union to postpone the TC Cup championship between Nanaimo Hornets and Port Alberni Black Sheep into the new year.
“Nanaimo did a ton of work,” Black Sheep head coach Jas Purewal said. “They shoveled the field off but it was just too cold the next day with the freezing. It was pretty unsafe.”
The final will be moved into January, but the league is in the process of setting the second half of the regular season schedule, Purewal said. “They didn’t want to pencil this one in until (the schedule) was done,” he said.
Purewal is pushing to play the final in late January.
“It would be nice to have a game under our belts first,” he said. “To be honest, it’s a little anti-climatic.”
Nanaimo is the team to beat, having gone undefeated in the first half of the season. The Sheep lost their only two games to Nanaimo.
To add insult to injury, Black Sheep kicker Jordan Kurucz discovered just before midnight on Friday that someone driving a truck or 4x4 had been doing doughnuts on the snow-covered rugby pitch at the Argyle Street facility.
Purewal said they won’t know the extent of damage until the snow melts. “It’s pretty senseless.”
Port Alberni RCMP Cpl. Amelia Hayden said RCMP received a call Friday night about the same truck at EJ Dunn Elementary.
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