The UBC men’s rugby team headed south to Berkeley, California for the annual World Cup face-off against long-time rivals the University of California, Berkeley Golden Bears.
The game is scheduled for an early 11 a.m. kickoff on Saturday and will be broadcasted on the PAC-12 network.
The Bears held the winning title for over a decade until UBC broke their streak in 2014 and were able to retain the trophy in 2015.
“We expect a very well coached team, we expect a hostile environment. We’re use to the field down there, but we’re not quite used to kicking off at 11 o’clock in the morning,” said UBC’s general manager of rugby Dave Brown.
California Berkeley is infamous for drawing large crowds at home and Saturday will be no different.
“The crowd will have an effect depending upon the state of the game [as well as] who’s leading and scoring more often. I think because we took an early lead and were never in a position last year where we were losing, that we actually took the crowd out of the game a bit,” said Brown.
The T-Birds played a physical game last week against Capilano RFC and have spent the days since focusing on getting healthy and training for Saturday’s matchup in California.
“We feel very confident going into it. We’ve been playing good rugby and we’re hoping to peak and play our absolute best down there, but the team is going in feeling quite confident,” said UBC's team captain, Alex Mascott.
“It’s one of the pinnacles of our season, certainly. We kind of look at big games or big moments every season that come and Cali is definitely the first of the very big moments. It’s a special thing to be able to play against them and just the history in it.”