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The only new face in McGrath’s second touring group of the 2016-17 HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series season is Kamloops’ Isaac Kaay. A mobile back-rower, Kaay is built like a modern sevens player and showed very well at last year’s National University 7s for UVic.

“Isaac has impressed me in training, he’s a big physical unit and he will bring that hard edge to some of our forward play,” McGrath added.

Once again, Canada is carrying 13 players on their trip down under. In past years this was to cover a late pre-event injury; this year it’s to take advantage of the new in-tournament injury coverage rule. Teams can swap their 13th man in for an injured player during the tournament, meaning they can continue to dress a full 12-man squad through the end of the tournament (assuming they don’t pick up further injuries, as happened to Canada in Cape Town).

The other notable change is John Moonlight stepping out of the captaincy for this event, with Nathan Hirayama and Harry Jones standing in as co-captains for the time being. Moonlight has been on taking a firefighting course in Texas in the last few weeks and McGrath said he felt it would be better for consistency’s sake to make the switch.

“It’s important to have your leaders around in practice as well as games so it’s great having Nate and Harry to lead the team and they’re just sharing the load so John doesn’t have to worry and he can focus on just playing,” McGrath said.

The squad he’s picked is veteran-laden, with the backline again to be anchored by the likes of Hirayama, Jones, Justin Douglas and Pat Kay. Hammond of course provides a specialist option at scrum-half, and Luke McCloskey seems likely to be an option there too (both Hirayama and Jones have played in the middle this season as well).