Forwards the heartbeat of Barbs rugby squad

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This article was published 18/06/2025 (187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s nothing like the rare moment a big man runs with the football.

Whether a defensive lineman picks off a pass or the left tackle scoops up a fumble and takes off, those few seconds of rumbling are pure cinema as it takes at least two men to bring him down.

That sort of play is a regular occurrence at a Brandon Barbarians men’s rugby game as the forwards make the most of each chance to touch the ball.

They also do a whole lot more, and it certainly doesn’t go unnoticed.

“The honest truth is our team is heavily carried by our forwards,” fly-half Bryson McNish said after the Barbs beat the Winnipeg Wasps 41-5 in their Rugby Manitoba men’s Division 2 home opener on Saturday at John Reilly Field.

“I would be remiss to say they’re not the majority of our winning power. As long as us in the back can capitalize on what they do for us, that’s all they ask of us and what we’ll do for them.”

Historically, the Barbarians haven’t been the flashiest team in Manitoba, typically far from it. While they’ve added some size and speed to their backs and created quick offence on long runs in the past few seasons, they’re built around their size up front.

“There’s this old rugby adage, ‘forwards win games, backs just decide by how much.’ We do a lot of the heavy lifting, the grinding work so we can set up our backs to run the ball and score tries for us,” said longtime prop Josh Koop.

“I don’t score many tries, so I take pride in the scrums I win and the times I take two guys with me to tackle and it opens up an extra guy in the backfield. It’s those little gains that add up.”

On Saturday, it’d be conservative to estimate the Barbs and Wasps locked up for 35 scrums during their 80-minute game. The majority of them shifted well towards the Winnipeg try line before Brandon scrum-half Kade Turnbull initiated the offence and kept his team moving forward.

Once the forwards got out of the scrum and back into the action, they were quick to seize their opportunities to rumble with the rock.

“Any time you just get a little moment to run with the ball, it’s one of the best moments you can have in any sport,” said Tyler Colquhoun.

He started playing football for Vincent Massey as a freshman and got to touch the ball exactly once, when he stripped a quarterback and ran it back for a touchdown during a scrimmage game.

It wasn’t long before the constant flow of rugby made the game more appealing than the start-and-stop nature of football, leading Colquhoun down a path to becoming a mainstay in the Barbs lineup.

He came in with veteran forwards like Brent Allum, who also coaches the Crocus Plains boys’ rugby team, to learn from. Now he’s one of the older guys, along with captain Adam Kowalchuk, Koop and Matthew Vinck.

Brandon has added some key younger pieces to the group, including Robin Roberts and Keegan Pitcairn-Freiheit, who both scored tries on Saturday.

“We’ve been lucky especially this year and last year we’ve started to get new guys in because looking forward to future generations to build the club,” Koop said. “When the older guys like me turn 40 and can’t handle it anymore, there’s someone to take up the mantle.”

The Barbs return to action on June 28 at home against the Assassins.

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