Human error strands C.B.S. rugby player at home instead of competing in Italy
A dream of a lifetime for Tony Pomroy of Conception Bay South has been squashed.
The 24-year-old rugby player made the cut to join Canada's national team, and had intended to join the club at the World University Games in Italy in July.
However, due to a human-made clerical error, Pomroy has been kicked off the team and will be watching the games from home.
Essentially, all he needed to provide was a response to the email congratulating him on making the club, and submit some paperwork.
"The acceptance I did, and then the same day I asked who would I need to send the paperwork to, and I just didn't get a response," Pomroy told CBC Radio's On The Go.
"A week later I sent them another message because I found it weird that I didn't get a response. And, no response. A couple of days after that they released the squad, while I was in Halifax, and my name wasn't there."
Pomroy has been playing rugby for about a decade, he said, and has been dabbling on the national scale with the Under-20 Canadian team and Rugby Canada which put him on the radar for the national team when he applied to play for the tournament in Italy.
He credits his local coach in trying to help him figured out a solution to the problem immediately.
"He called up the people at Rugby Canada and they started getting to the bottom of it. Within a day they realized, and they got back to my coach that he forgot to forward the e-mail to the coach, so the coach picked the remaining people that weren't confirmed," Pomroy said.
"There were six of us confirmed, five of us got put forward."
No fix
After realizing what had happened, Rugby Canada tried to fix their mistake, said Pomroy, in giving credit where credit is due.
However, after the team roster was released, deadlines were already passed to submit final rosters for the competition.
There is an outside chance that Pomroy could still make the roster, but that will only come at the cost of one of his teammates being injured, something he said he would never wish for.
Managers of the team and the president of Rugby Canada apologized to Pomroy and released a public statement to CTV.
For now, he'll keep pushing to make the jump into whatever competition comes next.
"There are some things that I can look forward to, or at least Rugby Canada are trying to fix their error. They say they want to see me because I have some decent test scores, in terms of speed. So, they do want to see me, they are interested," Pomroy said.
"I don't know if I'll ever get a actual shot at something like this again. The only thing I can think of that would top it would be the Commonwealth Games or the Olympics, and I don't see myself getting onto those teams realistically."
Read more articles from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
