Keyara Wardley: 'My body definitely needed a break'

There is no place quite like home. For Keyara Wardley, home will be the place she makes her Canada Women’s Sevens return.

This weekend at Vancouver SVNS the 26-year-old will play in her first tournament since the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. In all it will have been 585 days since her last time on a rugby pitch. Some 19 months with seven days change.

In the wake of Canada’s silver medal success at the Stade de France, Wardley made the decision to take a break from rugby. In that time, she enrolled in a 10 month lab assistant programme and, simply, enjoyed life.

Over the years the Calgary native had spent her fair amount of time on the sidelines since committing to the Canada Sevens programme as a teenager.

Over the years she has spent time rehabilitating from patellar tendon surgery, at the 2020 Olympics she broke her hip and even had to recover from an ACL injury.

“It was definitely a hard decision,” she told RugbyPass. “This environment is all I’d really known for the past six to eight years. A main factor was that my body definitely needed a break. And mentally too. It’s been a grind. It’s hard to stay on the front foot and be positive.

“It’s not news to anybody; I’ve had a lot of injuries in my career. In Paris I was coming back from my ACL and I came back early from that. I was in a good spot.

“I think the toll of that and always being on the loading ramp of wanting to get to that position, once I did, I was getting some of the side effects from it. Ultimately, I took the decision to take the year off and get my body healthy again.

“I did go back to school, and it was nice to work my brain in a different way and take the load off my body at the same time.”

It was a decision fully supported by Canada head coach Jocelyn Barrieau and her coaching staff, who remained regular figures in Wardley’s life.

“They knew where I was at,” Wardley said. “They knew how long I’d been doing this and they supported me in whatever decision I wanted to make – whether that was coming back to rugby or not.

“They’ve been really great with my transition in and out. I’d kind of pop in and out to get a new lifting programme or some new rehab.”

In a somewhat, yet familiar, turn of fate Wardley’s return to the pitch was delayed a little more with a broken heel. That injury meant that instead of making her return at HSBC SVNS Series stops in Dubai, Cape Town, Singapore or Perth, BC Place offers her a chance to strut her stuff again after the longest time on the sideline.

Wardley is not alone in making her Canada return this weekend. In total there have been six changes to the squad that went to Southeast Asia and Western Australia a month ago.

There is a place for Chloe Daniels, whose last appearance was also in Paris, Women’s Rugby World Cup star Florence Symonds and there will be a first appearance of the season for Piper Logan. After she missed the last two tournaments there is even a recall for 12-year team veteran Charity Williams.

 

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For their home tournament Canada have been named in Pool B with Australia, USA and Fiji.

“I’m definitely feeling it body wise,” Wardley smiled. “It’s exciting. It’s nice to see the new faces in our programme and watching them succeed on the Series.

“I almost feel like I haven’t skipped a beat. There’s lots of things I know I need to work on before tours start again. It’s just nice to come back to the environment and feel welcomed by everybody.

“My confidence is coming back. It’s camp again and not so much starting from square one.

“Playing in a game and breaking my heel in the last 30 seconds was really frustrating. That one hurt the most because I knew I wanted to come back this year.”

One of the reasons Wardley chose to make her return on the HSBC SVNS Series is the excitement around this Canada team. After four stages of the 2025/26 season the team are placed fifth in the overall standings.

Six points adrift of their continental rivals the USA, who are currently placed third, there is a real anticipation about this group. Part of the reason for this is the rotation Jocelyn Barrieau has been able to have in her playing group.

With the union’s ‘One Squad’ mentality, players have moved freely from the 15-a-side game and the HSBC SVNS Series.

For events in Singapore and Perth the squad was bolstered by the arrival of Olivia Apps, Gabrielle Senft, Alysha Corrigan, Fancy Bermudez and Sabrina Poulin in the midst of Premiership Women’s Rugby’s winter break.

Because what makes Canada so impressive is that when players are unavailable, like the aforementioned quintet, the likes of Wardley, Logan, Daniels and Claire Gallagher can slot in seamlessly.

This is before you consider the unflappable consistency of Carissa Norsten, Breanne Nicholas, Savannah Bauder and Kennedi Stevenson, who have all been mainstays on the Series this season.

“I think we have so much potential.” Wardley said. “We aren’t centralised right now and we’re still doing amazing things.

 

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“It’s really exciting moving forward and where our programme is going to be in two months from now, six months from now and even two years from now leading to LA.

“I think it is exciting to see the growth that we’ve had from last season into this season. We have so much potential as a group. I don’t think we’ve quite unlocked it yet. It’s really exciting to see where we can be.

“The player pool is maybe broader than it has been as well in previous years. There’s obviously a lot more people going for XVs or vice versa. People come from all sorts of different places to play sevens at the moment.”

All of a sudden the end of the regular HSBC SVNS Series season is upon us. The competition’s yearly sojourn to North America is proof of that, with Vancouver and New York the final curtain call ahead of HSBC SVNS World Championship events in Hong Kong, Valladolid and Bordeaux to end 2025/26.

With so much rugby yet to play, there is still much that Canada can achieve. They have, of course, never won at home and with Wardley now back among their ranks, the time to start making a charge for the very top is now.

“I think our eagerness and our grit in wanting to perform, especially at a home tournament” Wardley said. “We’ll see a lot more grit and resilience. And joy for the game.

“Moving forward into the later part of our season, I think just consistency. We’ve been trying to work on that. Obviously, our team is a bit different than the past few tours.

“Honestly the most important thing is just having fun with each other. We’re playing rugby. It is probably one of the greatest sports in the world. I’m really excited to move forward with this group.”