Countries Canada Runners-up Ontario Blues | Champions BC Bears Matches played 6 | |
Tries scored 33 (average 5.5 per match) Top point scorer Nathan Hirayama (BC Bears) (36) | ||
The 2009 CRC Season was the inaugural season of the CRC, Canada's highest level of domestic rugby competition. The BC Bears won the MacTier Cup going undefeated, while the Ontario Blues finished as runners-up, allowing them both to advance to the Americas Rugby Championship.
Nathan Hirayama's 36 points scored in the regular season is an all-time record for the league, during the 6 game format. The format was later changed to 10 games in the regular season, where in 2011 Dean Blanks scored 55 points, holding the current league record for points scored, albeit having played three more games.
Structure
The 2009 CRC season included four Canadian senior representative teams—the BC Bears, the Prairie Wolf Pack, the Ontario Blues, and the Atlantic Rock, playing against each other in a round-robin format, similar to that of The Rugby Championship, with the team that has collected the most points during the season being named champions. There were no divisions or conferences. Six games were played, each team playing every other team once. In lieu of a post-season, the champion and runner-up both continued on to participate in the ARC.