The Montreal Wanderers Rugby Football Club is a

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

club based in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

, Canada. It was founded in 1957, and is based on the grounds of the Douglas Hospital in Verdun.

Establishment

The Montreal Wanderers Rugby Club was conceived in the Spring of 1957. The Barbarians, the legendary touring allstar team from the UK, had just beaten a team of Quebec select players 41-3 at Delormier stadium in front of 5000 fans. Cliff Morgan, legendary fly half for the Barbarians, was reported to have told his Quebec hosts was that what Canada needed was more clubs. Present at that meeting were several members of the Montreal Scottish RFC (now known as

Westmount Rugby Club The Westmount Rugby Football Club is a Canadian rugby club based in Westmount, Quebec, Westmount, Quebec. Despite McGill University having a team in 1874, Westmount, which claims to have been established in 1876, is the oldest independent (as ...

). Due to an influx of players, the Montreal Scottish had adopted a Scots-only policy in order to manage their numbers. This left many players from other rugby nations without a home, and Cliff Morgan's suggestion was just the prompting they needed. Players from the Montreal Scottish founded two new clubs; the Montreal Barbarians RFC and the Montreal Wanderers RFC. The Wanderers played their first match against the Montreal Scottish in the Fall of 1957, and the first tour was held that Thanksgiving to Deep River, 200 km northwest of Ottawa. Over the first few years of the club's existence, Wanderers' recruitment benefited from the Scots-only policy of the Montreal Scottish RFC. The Wanderers saw their ranks swell to three full squads, which continued through to the mid 60's. With the end of Expo '67, many southern hemisphere Wanderers left Montreal and returned home. The Wanderers dropped from three sides to two in 1968, where they remained until a brief thirds revival in 2006.

The Founding of Rugby Quebec

The Montreal Wanderers were one of the founding clubs of

Rugby Quebec Rugby may refer to: Sport * Rugby football in many forms: ** Rugby league: 13 players per side *** Masters Rugby League *** Mod league *** Rugby league nines *** Rugby league sevens *** Touch (sport) *** Wheelchair rugby league ** Rugby union: 1 ...

(FRQ in French). Other founding clubs included Montreal Irish Rugby Football Club, Barbarians,

and Town of Mount Royal (TMR). Every one of these clubs continues to this day, fielding teams across multiple levels of the FRQ league.

Canadian National Team

The Montreal Wanderers are the club of origin for several

members Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...

of the Canadian Senior Men's Team. *

Nik Witkowski Nikyta Witkowski (born in London, England) is a rugby centre for the Canadian national rugby team and for Coventry R.F.C. in England. He grew up in Montreal and played his rugby for the Montreal Wanderers RFC. He currently resides in Vancouver ...

received 33 caps for , and was first capped against the USA on June 6, 1998. He scored a total of 37 tries for Canada between 1998 and 2006, and was part of the Canadian squad at the 2003 Rugby World Cup * Colin Robertson was capped for both 7s and 15s, receiving his first cap at the Hong Kong 7s on May 24, 1997. He was capped a total of 7 times, scoring 3 tries before retiring from international rugby in 2001 * Keith Wilkinson was the 109th player to be capped for Canada, making his debut against the Barbarians on June 12, 1976. He played with the Wanderers in the early 70's before moving to work in the higher levels of the Rugby Canada administration.

Present Day

The Wanderers currently field two teams in the FRQ men's league, competing against teams from Eastern Ontario and the rest of Quebec.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://montrealwanderers.ca/ Rugby union teams in Canada Rugby union teams in Montreal Rugby union teams in Quebec