Team

Grindal, 24, arrives at the club from Australian side Gordon, where the front-rower has been plying his trade in the Sydney Rugby Union Premiership.

The five-foot-eleven, 230-pound prop just completed his first season with the Highlanders, which followed five years of coming up through the ranks at Sydney University. While featuring for the Students, he notably helped lead his 2^nd Colts side to a junior championship in 2017, and later won the 4^th Grade Premiership title in 2019 en route to earning top forward honours across his grade.

Grindal will be designated as a domestic player through his Canadian eligibility, as both his mother (Montreal) and father (Toronto) hail from Canada.

The Grindal name will be familiar to many members of Ontario’s rugby community, as Connor’s father Iain was an accomplished scrum-half with the Toronto Welsh (now the Toronto Dragons), Queen’s University, and the Ontario provincial team throughout the 1980s before moving to Australia. While studying at Queen’s, Iain helped lead the Gaels to four consecutive Turner Trophy titles between 1986 and 1989, and won the institution’s Jim Tait Trophy in his final year at the school. Iain, along with brothers David and Blain, were part of a trio of Grindal siblings that regularly suited up for a successful Toronto Welsh team that claimed five consecutive Ontario Sevens Senior Men’s Championships throughout the mid-1980s.

The Sydney-born prop first picked up the sport as a teenager, though he quickly established himself as a formidable high school athlete, eventually earning a spot on the prestigious New South Wales Schoolboys side in 2016.

Updated: Sept. 15, 2022