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'I’ll prove you wrong': How Laetitia Royer overcame RWC 2021 heartbreak
By Joe Harvey
When Laetitia Royer was told she had not been selected for the 2021 Women’s Rugby World Cup she only had four words for Canada head coach, Kévin Rouet.
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“I’ll prove you wrong.”
Almost three years on from that day, Royer has almost certainly done just that.
Forced to watch on as her international teammates finished fourth overall in New Zealand from the injury reserve list, it is now hard to imagine a Canada team without the 34-year-old named at lock forward.
Royer was named in the World Rugby Women’s 15s Dream Team of the Year alongside fellow Canadians Sophie de Goede and Alex Tessier, underlining her importance to Rouet’s team.
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Invited to Monaco to tread the red carpet with her fellow Quebecois, Tessier, that trip to the Mediterranean provided a poignant moment for the duo.
“For us too, after the last World Cup (cycle) we were both like; I want more,” Royer said.
“Our little circle of Quebec girls just finished after the World Cup. But me and Tess weren’t. That made us both say, ‘I’m going for it’.
“It was the first time I have had outside validation because my validation is that I want to be a team that makes my team great and what my team give back to me is validation.”
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That validation came hot on the heels of a mesmeric year for Canada.
Moving up to second overall in the World Rugby rankings, winning the 2024 Pacific Four Series and contending with the best in the world, Canada are true contenders for the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup in England this year.
Rugby in Canada is already on an immense high after the women won silver in the rugby sevens at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris last summer.
But after years of competing in the 15-a-side game, but never truly contending, 2024 was a dramatic change of fortune for the national team, who bought wholeheartedly into the ideas presented to them.
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“It’s definitely what we envisioned for ourselves,” Royer reflected. “We are really having faith in the process our coach [Rouet] proposed to us.
“His vision became our vision and when all the pieces came together it created something magical.
“We have a huge amount of experience and depth in every position. Also, the family vibe.
“We are together not too many times, not enough times, and we enjoy those moments.”
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Rouet’s vision is an insight into the mind of the former engineer.
In the past, the 38-year-old has spoken about his desire to have his team reflect the country they represent, with a mixture of Anglo-Saxon structure with Gallic flair.
To help his team understand this ideology, Rouet recommended that his players read Be Water, My Friend: The True Teachings of Bruce Lee.
“It’s to be adaptable, to be like water,” Royer said.
“To unlock any defence with our structure or with our chaos. Really using our flexibility, our way of seeing things and being moved to play unstructured versus structured.
“Which is a big difference. The European way of playing, they are really structured and robotic in some ways.
“In Canada, we don’t have a league, so we don’t have a style of play. So, we embraced not having a type. I think for us, that is a huge difference.
“Everyone bought in because we could see how it pays off more and more. And when the seed is planted and you see the result, you taste it, you know it is working for us.
“The coaches let us be us too. That’s a big thing. Not many coaches are allowing that freedom for their players and let them try stuff without benching them the next day.”
When asked which result defined Canada’s adaptable style, Royer hardly skips a beat before answering.
“When we beat New Zealand”.
In truth, it is not hard to see why Royer picked this result. It was the game that wrapped up Canada’s second-ever Pacific Four Series title and the first time the nation had beaten the Black Ferns.
“When we entered the pitch, we were really cool,” Royer said.
“The whole week we were just like ‘we’re staying cool, it’s just a game’ and we shifted our focus into trusting the process.
“Before, we were like ‘We need to win, this is our win’ and it didn’t work. When you focus on the result you miss the whole point.
“We were goofing around and playing in the warm-up and when the game started, we were just on the same frequency. We were tuned in.”
Over the course of 80 minutes in Christchurch, Canada posed questions to New Zealand that they had no answers for.
Sevens star Fancy Bermudez may have scored two tries, but those scores came largely thanks to the grunt of a forward pack that refused to take a backward step.
Combined with McKinley Hunt’s early in the second-half score, Canada faced a nervous wait as the clock ticked towards the 80-minute mark with Olivia Apps in the sin bin, only for Tessier to alleviate any stress with a stroke of her right foot.
“When she kicked it, we were just like ‘oh my God, we did it’,” she said.
“Then we learned in the changing room that we moved to second [in the World Rugby rankings]. That was just really fun.”
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With their new world ranking in hand, Canada became the team to watch at WXV 1 last Autumn.
Hosting the tournament in Vancouver, British Columbia, Royer and her teammates made light work of France and Ireland in their opening fixtures before facing England in the tournament’s finale at BC Place.
Many had the fixture pegged as a preview of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup final and it certainly delivered.
There was little wiggle room in the clash as first-half tries for Canada’s Justine Pelletier and England’s Maud Muir left the score 7-5 at the break.
Despite England receiving two second-half yellow cards it was the Red Roses that went home with a 21-12 win and a second WXV 1 crown.
Consigned to third place, behind a resurgent Ireland, Royer and her international teammates learned plenty over the course of their three outings.
“The coaches were like ‘this tournament is not the big picture’, this is to build toward the World Cup,” she said. “We didn’t care about the result, basically.
“The last game against England, it didn’t feel like a loss, but we could have definitely won. We were winning and then something shifted.
“We installed in their brains that we were going to win. That’s a win in itself. It’s a ‘We’ll see you later’ kind of thing.
“We have to go through England if we want to win a World Cup.
“They are the one team we haven’t beaten yet. That is our personal challenge.
“But we are not studying England every week.”
There are three months until Royer returns to international rugby.
The 2025 edition of the Pacific Four Series will allow Canada another chance to flex their muscles and cement themselves as favourites for this year’s World Cup, but in the meantime, players will have to return to day-to-day life.
For some that is competing in HSBC SVNS, and for others it is Premiership Women’s Rugby or staying home in Canada, for Royer her next 12 weeks will be in France.
Playing Èlite 1 rugby since 2020, the 34-year-old is in the midst of a title race with ASM Romagnat who are currently second in the league table.
Using Rugby Quebec’s connection with France to move across the Atlantic to pursue a rugby-playing career, Royer spent two years with Lons Section Paloise before moving to ASM Romagnat.
Only taking up rugby in 2016 before successive ACL injuries meant that she missed out on two years of rugby before a return to university rugby in 2019 for the Concordia Stingers.
But unlike Premiership Women’s Rugby, Élite 1 does not have professional status and Royer works three hours a day at ASM Omnisports, helping young athletes with their schoolwork.
Admitting that it is not a career path she sees her long-term future in, Royer says that the sacrifices she has made in her personal life outweigh her professional ones.
“It’s not the professional sacrifices that were hard,” Royer said. “I always wanted to be a pro athlete. That’s what I am good at and expressed myself better and my path to be better as a human.
“For me, the sacrifice is that my boyfriend, my family and my friends are over there. Leaving my boyfriend is like leaving my inner peace and calm at home. It’s really hard sometimes.”
A smile crept across Royer’s face when the topic of 2025 was brought up.
Just the notion of what is on offer this year is abundantly clear just from mentioning the year and asking what her ambitions are.
“Apart from winning the World Cup?” she grinned.
Already as January ends, Royer has planned these next 12 months in the finest detail.
Breaking the months down into the aspects of the game that she wants to focus on and have the most impact on the pitch for both club and country.
“For me, it [2025] would be to work on my art and control the environment and express myself and seeing that player that I see in my head every day,” Royer said.
“It is really being able to keep a calm and balanced space while reaching that gold medal. Overachievers like us, we want to do, do, do, but we need to find that balance of keeping connected with your inner peace.”
Canada’s World Cup campaign will start on Saturday 23 August against Fiji in York, before playing Wales and Scotland in Pool B.
Coming into the tournament with such a positive body of work behind them from last year, teams will try to pose more questions of the Canadians and suppress the style of rugby that helped the team leapfrog New Zealand and France in the World Rugby rankings.
After years of being the chasers this change in role and having a target on their back is not lost on Royer, who wants Canada to keep utilising the same drive and motivation which has them on the doorstep of greatness.
“Keep the faith and the trust within each other,” Royer said. “I think we are on a great path.
“The main thing is that we believe that we have everything we need within ourselves. We have devoted athletes and devoted coaches. We cannot ask for more.
“The only thing is financial help. But we have shown we are able to do it without it.
“That just shows that we are hungrier, and we know what being hungry means.”
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