Behind the lens at a Queen's University Rugby Sevens tournament

Traveling from Sydney to Kingston, Ontario to cover a university rugby event feels like stepping into a different sporting universe. The air is sharper, the daylight shorter in February, and the stands carry a distinctly Canadian flavour that has very little in common with the sevens arenas I have photographed back home.

For Jeff Chan, Golden Gaels Photos has grown into a long-running chronicle of Queen's athletics, and the rugby sevens tournament always lands near the top of the priority list each winter. The fast nature of the seven-a-side format compresses huge chunks of drama into short halves, and that ratio of action to recovery time is a gift for anyone holding a camera.

Arriving with notebook scribbles, layered clothing, and a couple of weather-sealed bodies, the goal was simple: capture the tournament in a way that respects the players and tells the story of a campus community event. What followed was a weekend of cold fingers, brilliant skies, and a renewed appreciation for how a small pitch can produce so much story.

A campus stadium in the heart of winter

Kingston is a town shaped by lake winds and old limestone buildings, and the university grounds feel equally compact and historic. The fields sit close to student residences, which means the path from car to sideline is short enough that camera bags stay warm on the walk over.

Walking those few metres felt like a soft reminder of how different conditions can be between hemispheres. In Brisbane or Perth, a February tournament would mean sunscreen and shade caps. Here, gloves, hand warmers, and a balaclava under a beanie are normal kit.

Even with preparation, the cold finds its way into the camera bag. Batteries drain faster than they do on a Sydney Sevens weekend at Allianz Stadium, where humidity and heat are usually the bigger concerns. Lens fog is constant for the first hour, and a spare body tucked against the photographer's jacket becomes a small daily ritual.

The rhythm of a seven-a-side match

Sevens is a stripped-down sport. Seven players per side, halves of seven minutes, and constant end-to-end running create an intensity that fifteen-a-side rarely matches. The skill level is high, but so is the volume of contact, and the photo opportunities move from set piece to breakdown in seconds.

Photographing the wide play means tracking off both shoulders as the ball swings across the pitch. Photographing the collisions means planting a foot and committing to a focal length that locks onto the ruck. The challenge is not finding action; the challenge is choosing which version of action deserves the shutter press.

A single pass can produce three different frames worth keeping. A turnover near the touchline can become a story about momentum, a player's reaction, or the supporters' response. Each frame feels more like a still from a film than a sports headline.

Packing for the climate, not the postcard

A tournament shoot demands redundancy, especially in February. The lighting shifts from bright, overcast whites to early golden tones as the afternoon stretches toward evening, which calls for a kit built for variability rather than perfection.

What made the camera bag

Storing spare batteries inside an inner jacket pocket between matches kept them alive for the late games. A microfibre cloth lived within reach at all times, because snowflakes on a front element are the universal enemy of clean rugby shots. A small notebook helped with jersey numbers and player names, the kind of detail that turns a quick frame into a useful archive photo.

A simple rhythm kept the day on track: shoot the wide set piece, work the breakdown with the prime, drift to the crowd for a minute, then circle back as the ball moves to the far touchline. Repeating that loop every few minutes turned the fast pace of sevens into a manageable flow.

Moments that defined the weekend

The best pictures rarely come from the obvious plays. They arrive in the walk-up to kick-off, in the silent seconds after a missed conversion, or in the wider frame where supporters, mascots, and coaches all happen to be doing something interesting at once.

Frames that stayed in the memory

Each of these moments shares something with the rugby culture that surrounds me back home in New South Wales. The suburban club scene, the supporter rituals, and the strange seriousness of a university crowd mirror what you find at Gordon or Warringah, only with snow underfoot and coffee in thermoses instead of eskies.

Capturing those quiet moments also taught a useful lesson. The biggest crowd noise of the day arrived after the final whistle, but the most memorable frame came from a long pause before kick-off. Carving out time to watch, instead of chasing the ball, gave the camera a chance to record the human side of the game.

The life around the touchline

A sevens tournament is not just the action on the pitch. It is also the drumline that warms up an hour before kick-off, the volunteers in bright vests handing out water, and the rows of parents wrapped in blankets who have driven in from out of town.

The Queen's campus wears its school colours generously during tournament weekends, and the band turns up in numbers that would feel familiar at a Brisbane GPS final. The brass section plays between tries, the dance team fills in at half-time, and the announcers keep the energy up even when the temperature dips.

The relationships matter too. Friendships that started on a Queen's tour to Australia years ago have grown into reciprocal visits and quiet alumni networks. Walking the sideline in Kingston felt similar to the buzz around a Sydney grade club, where generations of families return to the same patch of grass each winter.

Comparing it to the Australian game

Australian rugby has long been a stage for sevens excellence. The national programs, based around Sydney, have lifted World Series trophies, and the Sydney Sevens was a flagship event on the global calendar for years. Watching the university game in Kingston offered a window into a different scale of the same sport.

The professionalism is there, but the atmosphere is looser. University rugby in Canada carries much of the student-club character that exists in Brisbane's GPS schools or in local union competitions across Victoria. The difference is the weather, the way alumni travel from Toronto or Montreal to stand on a freezing touchline, and the role the bands and mascots play in keeping the day moving.

There is something quietly familiar about the rituals. Australian players tap their shoulders for a quick rest; the Queen's players hugged between tries. Australian supporters queue for a pie; Queen's supporters queued for poutine and hot chocolate. Sport, in both countries, carries people through cold mornings with small comforts.

Why these images matter

A university tournament sits lower on the attention scale than a Bledisloe or a Super Rugby final, but the archive value is real. Years from now, the players in these photos will be doctors, teachers, engineers, and parents. Their teammates will scroll back to find a weekend when everyone on the squad was still eligible for student fees.

Golden Gaels Photos treats every frame as part of a longer documentary thread. The rugby sevens tournament is one strand in a much larger record of campus life. Photographs from any single tournament are not just pictures of sport; they are pages of a yearbook being written in real time.

For anyone curious, the images from this event, and from earlier ones, remain available through the site for personal, non-commercial viewing. If a photograph catches your eye and the caption sparks a memory of a cousin or a friend who played, the link in the gallery page is the place to start. Drop a message through the site if a print or a high-resolution file is needed for a personal project, a school presentation, or a family keepsake.