Coach Kingsley Jones

Pool B

World rank 22

Previous best Quarter-final

The last time Canada played in Japan was six years ago. They’d played four days before, halfway around the world in Toronto. Their body clocks thought it was six in the morning when the game kicked off in pouring rain in Nagoya.

Despite all that, the Kieran Crowley-coached squad lost only 16-13 to Eddie Jones’s men. The Canadians of that era beat the likes of Georgia, Fiji, the USA and Tonga regularly.

Four years ago in England at the World Cup, Canada knew they could make big strides forward in their rugby development. There’s an alternate reality to consider from what actually occurred, where Canada hold on to beat Italy and avoid a tragic collapse against Romania, a loss pulled from the clutches of victory. If they had done that double, they would have qualified directly for 2019, yielding a positive feedback loop: a bigger dose of World Rugby funding, higher profile November Tests and so on.

Instead, after the World Cup, Crowley fell out with Rugby Canada management after eight years in charge and took a job in Italy. His replacement, Mark Anscombe, lasted barely more than a year; the players chafed under his coaching style and the on-field performance, only two wins in 15 Tests, reflected the dysfunction.

Enter Kingsley Jones, hired to replace Anscombe in the autumn of 2017. The former Wales international had coached at the highest levels in the UK but also knew plenty about running a minor national squad from his time with Russia earlier this decade.

He had to do two things in short order: rebuild his struggling squad and qualify for Japan.

The former is ongoing, with half his squad veterans of the Crowley era. The latter? Well they made it and once again this is a big tournament for Canada. Their schedule is punishing, four games in 17 days. Maybe there are two wins in there: the Canadians again have the Italians in their sights for an upset and they close the tournament against Namibia, who have never recorded a win at a World Cup.

(In between, are matches against South Africa and New Zealand, where the goal is to simply minimise the damage.)

In reality, eyes really should be set on 2023. For one thing, Kingsley Jones has more professionals to consider than his predecessors did, thanks to Major League Rugby.

By the head coach’s count, there are now 45 Canadian players in the two-year-old US-based competition (including a Toronto-based Canadian entry, the Arrows).

Add another dozen or so who play overseas, like the captain, Tyler Ardron, of Super Rugby’s Chiefs, or Glasgow’s world-class winger DTH van der Merwe and Jones has nearly nearly twice as many professionals to pick from compared to when he first arrived.

Under Jones, Canada have shown moments of promise. The defence hasn’t been as consistently lost at sea as it was under Anscombe. The scrum is much more stable than it was under Crowley but the lineout has had struggles. The backline remains Canada’s strength, a hard-running group with a knack for finishing.

They’re the proverbial “maybe this game they’ll put it all together” squad, but the reality is they’ve managed only one Test win in 2019, a hammering of Chile at home in February.

If they do put it together and reel off two wins, they can rightly say they’re back on course.

• Patrick Johnston is a sports writer for the Province and Vancouver Sun