Training Every Tuesday & Thursday at 6:30pm at the Brockton Oval (Men's & Women's team)
One · Place
The Rowers have played rugby at Brockton Oval since 1908. One ground, inside Stanley Park, with the ocean on one side and a hundred-year stone wall on the other. The clubhouse sits at the entrance to the park on Coal Harbour, in the same building as the wider Vancouver Rowing Club, founded in 1886 and the oldest amateur athletic club in the city. More on the history of the club if you want it.
Training starts at 6:30pm so most of the city is still at work when you arrive. After a match the patio looks out across Coal Harbour to the downtown skyline. Almost no rugby club in British Columbia has a setup like this, and we know it. Directions and parking if it's your first time at Brockton.
Two · Ambition
VRC Rugby runs senior men's and women's sides across BC Rugby, plus a 3rds side for new and returning players. Alumni include Rugby Canada captains and Major League Rugby players. The women's program is led by a World Rugby Level 2 coach with more than twenty years of experience across every age group.
Training has structure. Players move between grades on form and availability. Match day matters. There's a side at the level you're at, and a path up if you want it.
Youth comes up through the same ground. The kids running around Brockton on a Saturday morning are training under the same coaches who run the senior programs, and plenty of the current senior squad came through the VRC youth pipeline themselves.
Three · Community
Every rugby club talks about community. This is what VRC means by it: tours, reunion matches, weddings in the clubhouse, season dinners, alumni who show up in January to run preseason sessions with the current squad. People who moved to Vancouver from another province, another country, or another continent, used the club as a way in and found a network that followed them through the rest of their adult life.
Plenty of the Rowers in the clubhouse on a Saturday evening stopped playing years ago. They come back because the club never stopped being theirs. You get the same deal when you join: the coaching, the matches, and a clubhouse on Coal Harbour for as long as you want it. The alumni network picks up where the playing career leaves off.
