Polish mining unearthing hidden gems in England
All good things come to end and the government’s rather illogical imposing of quarantine restrictions on Poland has, at least temporarily, brought a splendid and rather unlikely rugby adventure to a halt.
With no rugby outside of the Premiership or PRO14 it’s been a desert out there for six months for junior rugby players and rugby tragics in Britain... unless you can boast Polish heritage in which case there has been rugby aplenty to gladen the heart. Whatsmore The Rugby Paper can claim a little bit of the credit, more of which anon.
Poland – like all Tier 2 and Tier 3 nations – have been looking for ways to survive and flourish in recent years against predatory T1 Nations and, even before Covid, had started to scour our National Leagues and just below for Polish qualified and Polish heritage players.
The immediate effect was an upturn in fortunes at the end of their Europe Rugby Trophy campaign last season which ended with a first ever win over fast improving Switzerland and an unlucky 7-6 defeat against the champions Netherlands, who now face a play-off to see if they will join the likes of Georgia, Romania and Spain in the Championship this season.
The arrival of Covid seemed to threaten all that but with Poland escaping relatively unscathed – the mortality rate has been less than six per cent of that in the UK and the current infection rate is still barely 25 per cent of Britain – the Union were allowed to stage the Polish Cup competition in June and July and started the ten-team Extraliga in early August.
The top four or five teams in the League are semi-professional with budgets of between £250-300,000, the rest amateurs who nonetheless train together most days. Not a fortune but enough to think outside of the box and fly out a handful of British-based, Poland qualified players every weekend for a training session on the Friday, a league match and a traditional Polish apres rugby Saturday night followed by a Sunday afternoon flight hope when they can sleep off a busy weekend.
Chinnor’s Tom Fidler, Bromsgrove’e Ed Krawecki and Tomek Pozniak from Bristol University have all been playing regularly for Ogniwo Sport while Sam Stelmaczek from Macclesfield and Zen Swagrzak of Pontypool and Tyndale’s Ross Cooke have been lining up for Spart Jarocin. Meanwhile David Rubasniak from Ebbw Vale and Dan Tomanek from Steling County have been starring for Budowlani Lubin.
Pozniak and Tomanek, both students, have even taken it a step further. With their courses now reduced to online lectures and tutorials they have been able to base themselves lock stock and barrel out in Poland for the duration of the league season which ends this month. They presumably have the option of staying on and riding out the new quarantine restrictions which came into effect at 3am yesterday morning.
Many of those listed above have made their Poland debuts in the last year or so and their Irish coach Duaine Lindsay has been heartened by this unexpected twist to the otherwise depressing tale of Covid woe. Kij ma dwa końce as the polish say – a stick has two ends.
“The lads have been coming in and out regularly this summer and showed a fantastic commitment to Polish rugby which has been much appreciated by the domestic players,” says Lindsay. “That’s a degree of integration you sometimes don’t get when you bring in heritage players. It was I understand a bit of an issue a decade or so ago when Poland looked to mine the strong French connection and fly in some quality players from France for one or two big games every season.”
The mastermind behind the entire project had been Adam Michaelson back here in England. Like almost all of those concerned he is the grandson of post-war Polish immigrants and being a big rugby fan has been a Rugby Paper reader for many years. What struck him every Sunday morning reading through our reports of the junior leagues was the number of Polish surnames listed in the team-line ups. Was there an untapped source of talent there waiting to be mined?
“Polish surnames are very distinctive from even Russian, German and Czech Republic surnames, they are very easy to spot, so I soon drew up a list of those playing at a decent level from The Rugby’s Paper’s excellent coverage. Then I would access the club’s website and often there was a reference to an individual’s Polish heritage in the player notes. I basically compiled a Polish dossier.
“The next step was to phone the club secretary and ask permission to approach those players to confirm the suspected Polish connection and see if they would be interested in putting themselves forward for the land of their grandparents and occasionally parents.
“The tricky bit is that there are many Poland qualified players who have English surnames because their Polish connection is via their Polish mothers or grandmothers who have married British men. We held a Polish rugby trial at Rosslyn Park last year and that flushed a few more out and now there is a good deal of word of mouth coming into play.”
Michaelson’s approach is entirely logical, indeed the much wealthier Polish FA employ two or three full-time scouts in Britain to track schoolboy stars and Academy players at Premiership clubs with Polish connections.
Polish rugby has to box clever though. There are actually some very high quality players qualified around the world – Michaelson has a list of 104 players from all corners – but many of them are either still chasing caps in their native land or are making a decent living out of the game with their clubs that they cannot jeopardise by disappearing to Poland for weeks on end.
For the time being those more established players are on the backburner although initial contact has often been made. For now Poland are approaching mainly spirited rugby adventurers close by in Britain who are of a standard that could, with luck, help take Poland back to the European Rugby Championship.
At which point, with World Cup qualification up for grabs, Poland might begin to appeal to those who have missed out on international honours in T1 nations. That dilemma is one they hope to face in the future.
The Poles kick off their international season on Saturday with a friendly against Ukraine – the first Test match anywhere since lockdown – and play Ukraine again at the end of the month in an REC Trophy game. Covid permitting of course.