Article content continued

“We’ve been talking about it unofficially, but like everything there’s always the funding part of it,” said Pandas rugby head coach Matt Parrish, whose regular 15-player squad won bronze of their own at Canada West championships this season, despite undergoing the biggest turnover in his 18 years with the program after losing 14 players from the previous year. “Once we got the call, everybody was really ready to go.

“And then this (dome) was the good timing because it allowed us to do something in Alberta as well as on the coast.”

Photo by Kucerak, Ian / Postmedia

The U of A’s participation in the pilot project would have been severely limited were it not for their ability to practise indoors on a regular field.

“Last year, we did a tournament in Lethbridge, we were pushing our luck a little bit in the middle of March,” Parrish said. “But up here, you wouldn’t dare schedule anything where people are flying in.”

Once the pilot is finished, Parrish said he wouldn’t be surprised to see a rugby sevens league run alongside the already established 15-player game, with other U Sports conferences looking to get on board.

“I don’t think we quite know exactly which way this is going,” he said. “We’re just going to run with it.

“It gives us some legitimacy of being a separate sport, it’s not just 15s girls playing some sevens.”

The only immediate drawback is that for as much space as the dome covers, it doesn’t include the grandstands, making it primarily a practice facility with a focus on training and development as opposed to spectating. But the ends will begin to justify the means once the U of A’s football, soccer and rugby squads spend more and more off-season time training on the same turf they compete on during their U Sports season.