You may not have heard of Major League Rugby (MLR), but Stratford’s Neil Trainor has and is about to embark on a professional career south of the border.
Neil graduated from Queen’s University in Kingston in December with a degree in civil engineering. He is currently in Langford, British Columbia, working out with the Canadian Rugby Development Academy. He came off the field recently and noticed two missed calls on his cell phone. The Carolina Anthem had drafted him second overall.
“It definitely caught me by surprise. It was not what I was expecting going into this whole process. I wanted to go in the first round so I exceeded that and am very happy with the result.”
The league did have a team in Toronto, but it folded for financial reasons. Trainor explained that door may have closed, but another one opened.
“That team had an academy so I played for them last summer but this summer I was invited to Virginia to train at a combine-style camp for the MLR. I wasn’t familiar with players from the US so it was an entirely new experience for me.”
Trainor credits much of his success to playing in high school at Stratford District Secondary School and then with the Black Swans club team.
“That community, that group is so welcoming to new players and young players. It made it really easy for me as a young high school student to transition and train with these grown men who had been playing rugby for a lot longer.”
Trainor, who is 5 foot 10 and 235 pounds, plays a position called hooker which is part of the front row consisting of two props and himself.
“We are typically some of the bigger guys on the field. In a scrum when we all come together, I am dead in the middle between the props and my job is to get the ball from being fed into the scrum out the back of it. Another role of the hooker is during a line out when I throw the ball into the players.”
Along with playing professional rugby, a humble Trainor said he aspires to make the Canadian national team.
“Some guys I have trained with here at the academy have recently gone on to play for the national team. I would say I am within that range of players but it’s not for me to say.”
