With little fanfare the rugby career of Hubert Buydens came to an end recently.
Buydens was born in Saskatoon, and while Saskatchewan isn’t exactly a hotbed of rugby, he carved out a rather stellar career, including appearing in just shy of 60 international matches for the Canadian national team.
Buydens said when he started playing rugby there was no expectation of it taking him anywhere.
“I didn’t even know Canada had a national team when I started to play,” he said in a recent telephone interview. He said he went into a rugby shop that existed back then in Saskatoon and saw a national team jersey and thinking how crazy that seemed.
But Buydens would earn his first international test cap versus England A (Saxons) match in Toronto in June 2006.
He would ultimately appear in an eleven World Cup matches for Canada 2011, 2015 and 2019.
It was the World Cup in Japan last year that led Buydens to the decision to retire, adding the game basically told him it was time.
“It (the decision) kind of makes itself – when people stop paying you to play,” he said, adding in Japan “I was the oldest guy on our team, and probably our slowest.”
Buydens was also playing Major League Rugby with NOLA Gold through that team’s first years in New Orleans. He said the league which saw its third season cut short by COVID-19 earlier this year is quickly getting better in terms of play.
“The league is definitely getting better,” he said, pointing to NOLA as an example. In year one it was predominantly local area players, and while those are needed for depth, the team has brought in players in subsequent season to bolster the overall quality.
Ultimately, Buydens said MLR could become a major pro sports league along the lines of Major League Soccer.
“I think that’s definitely the goal of ownership,” he said, adding COVID was a bump in the road that may slow momentum but that it can overcome as those involved knew it was “not a money making endeavour right off the start.”
Of course nothing is assured for MLR either, as Buydens can attest since he played with the San Diego Breakers in PRO Rugby in 2016, the lone season that professional rugby league managed in the United States.
For Canadian fans MLR is of greater interest obviously with the Toronto Arrows in the league. There is also talk of a second team in time, Vancouver most often mentioned, but Calgary too.
Buydens is in Calgary now and he thinks the Alberta city could be a better fit than Vancouver for a couple of reasons. To start with a lot of B.C. talent is already playing in MLR with nearby Seattle, so Calgary becomes a new centralized site to draw players to, he said.
“And there’s probably less to do here than in Vancouver,” said Buydens, adding that is a factor in attracting a fan base.
Interestingly it is not the professional games in North America, or his national team efforts that Buydens settled on when asked about his most memorable experience.
“I think my time in New Zealand. I really enjoyed the people there, and the culture there,” he said.
In March 2013 Buydens went to New Zealand and played for the New Plymouth Old Boys, who played in the Taranaki RFU’s Senior A competition.
Buydens showed well with New Plymouth and was signed by the Manawatu Turbos of the ITM Cup. “Buydens played 16 games for the Turbos over the 2013 and 2014 ITM Cup competitions.
So why does Buydens love rugby as much as he has?
“It’s a faster pace than football. You don’t have all the stoppages,” he said. “And you get to do everything.”
Buydens knows the comparison to football well. He was a standout guard at the University of Saskatchewan, and attended the BC Lions training camp after they selected him in the sixth round of the 2008 CFL Draft.
In football he said he loved hitting people “but I never really got to touch the ball.”
In rugby “everybody gets to do everything.”
So what’s next for Buydens?
He said he’d like to coach the sport he loves, adding to be around rugby “every day, that would be good.”
Certainly with 14 years across multiple teams Buydens said he’s learned a lot, and he would enjoy passing that knowledge to another generation of players. He has started down that road as Assistant Coach with the Trinity Western Spartans university program.
