Siberian hard men spark rugby revolution
Krasny Yar, Edinburgh’s opponents on Saturday, are making Europe sit up, writes Richard Bath
In terms of upsets, Krasny Yar’s display at their Siberian home last week to defeat Stade Francais is up there with Leicester City’s Premier League win, Japan’s victory over the Springboks, and Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson. Granted, their unlikely win did not warrant as many column inches as a triumvirate of events which caused sport’s tectonic plates temporarily to realign, but for a motley crew of Russians, Moldovans, Georgians and a brace of Tongans to beat the reigning Challenge Cup holders still rates as a result right up at the pointy end of the sporting Richter scale.
Nor did the team from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk ride their luck during their European debut. In front of a sold-out crowd of 3,600 in the only purpose-built rugby arena in Russia east of the Urals, Krasny Yar came from 12-5 down to lead 24-12 at half-time and 34-29 at the final whistle.
Seven thousand kilometres and six time zones to the west, no one was more shocked by Krasny Yar’s famous victory than their next Challenge Cup opponents, Edinburgh. “Yeah, you could say the result surprised me,” said prop Darryl Marfo, fresh from a 37-14 win at London Irish. “To be honest, I don’t massively follow the Russian league results, but when you see what they produced in the footage, it makes you sit up and take notice.”
If Russia’s 12-team Premier League has blipped onto the radar of rugby fans, the reason is likely to be Krasnoyarsk, a city of more than one million people in the heart of Siberia. Cold – temperatures drop to, on average, -15C in January – bleak and dominated by the Yenisei river and the Trans-siberian railway, this city on the Steppe just north of Mongolia has several claims to fame. One is as a centre of aluminium production; another is as a nexus for Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tajiks and Kyrgyz from the nearby “Stans”. The latest is that it has become the epicentre of Russian rugby.
It is actually home to two leading
Russian sides.
On one bank of the Yenisei sit 50-year-old
Krasny Yar; on the other are Eniseistm, the arrivistes and
Russian champions, who beat
Worcester 19-12 in last year’s
Challenge Cup but lost 57-17 at home against
Bordeauxbegles the day before Krasny’s heroics against Stade. They are two of the six fully professional sides in Russia, with the champions Enisei boasting a playing budget of £3.1million to Krasny Yar’s £2.2million.
One player who knows Krasny well is former Edinburgh centre and current Scotland sevens player Nick Mclennan, who spent time there with three fellow New Zealanders as part of the Russian club’s tie-up with his former club, Canterbury. “The traditional image of Siberia as a pretty bleak place isn’t too far wrong,” he said. “Moscow was quite westernised, but Siberia was more the real Russia, with very little English spoken. We were quite naive, so I don’t think we fully took account of the dangers, but some of our teammates would be carrying handguns when we went out – it just seemed normal to them.” Mclennan’s verdict that Siberians “love contact” and “there would definitely be hard men” suited to rugby in Krasnoyarsk was borne out by the way Krasny Yar’s forwards – a Tongan, three Moldovans, and four Russians, including double try-scorer Viktor Gresev – dismantled Stade’s pack.
But a new generation of Russian players is trying to change the way the game is played in the country, with the Challenge Cup – for which Krasny Yar and Enisei qualified last season by reaching the final of the Continental Shield –
‘Some team-mates would be carrying handguns when we went out, it seemed normal to them’
proving the perfect catalyst. Chief among them is their full-back and captain Vasily Artemyev, who speaks perfect English thanks to four years of schooling at Brian O’driscoll’s alma mater, Blackrock College, a degree at UCD, a spell in the Leinster Academy and three seasons at Northampton Saints.
In the past five years, he has seen the game become a fixture in many schools in the area, Russian rugby become as much about expansive running as forward attrition, and the city consolidate its position as the most rugbyliterate area in Russia.
Competing against a better class of opposition is really developing the game in Krasnoyarsk. “In the list of most popular sports we’re probably sixth or seventh, so there’s still a long way to go to attract attention to our sport and this platform in the Challenge Cup really helps,” says Artemyev.
Last week’s win was, he says, achieved by a hard-nosed approach. “We just wanted to win more than Stade,” he said. “The odds on us winning weren’t good, but the quality of our performance was a standout.”
Rugby in Russia is largely a summer game, and with winter closing in in Krasnoyarsk, both Krasny Yar against Edinburgh and Enisei versus Dragons will be played on Saturday in Moscow, which is closer to the Scottish capital than it is to Siberia.
“We won’t feel too uncomfortable in Moscow because we play there so regularly,” says Artemyev. “This is a great event for the club. It was our debut last week and this week we’re hosting another top European club. It’s a high-paced European game that we don’t get to play too often, unfortunately. The more you play against better opponents the more you improve. If we should win any more games we’ll be very happy.”