Rugby festival in Malkerns
MBABANE – The Eswatini Rugby Union (ERU) will host a rugby development festival tomorrow.
It will be staged at Princess Pholile in Malkerns. ERU Communications Manager Phumlani Gumedze said the festival was all about rugby development for community centres around the country, where they were expecting 145 players in seven communities. Gumedze was speaking during a press briefing at Albert Millin in Mbabane on Tuesday.
“We started running this project around February after taking a long break due to COVID-19. We will soon find out on Saturday if the work we have been doing in the communities between February and now is successful or not. Saturday’s festival will be more focused on the ladies to accelerate the help development of female rugby in the country. Communities that will be participating include Siphofaneni, Malkerns, Malindza, Mankayane, Bhunya, to name but a few,” said Gumedze.
He said they were trying to spread out to other communities, but what was slowing the process was that the work force remained low because they still had to train other rugby coaches.
On the other hand, ERU Head of Training Development and Education (TDE) Steve Reynolds said rugby was not yet in the standard of soccer in the country and they were planning to change that. “We are behind in rugby, which is something we’re looking to change. I believe that the most important thing that has to be noted is that rugby is a late development sport.
Development
“It takes maybe five years of development work to get a player to a reasonable standard because it is a very technical game. Our development programme that we have put together will get the players in a position where they can tackle and make contact safely and that is not something that will come overnight,” said Reynolds.
Reynolds said from a development point of view, because there had been relatively little development in certainly over two and a half years due to COVID-19, they had not been out on the field. They have to now start bringing the players up to the level that they were before the advent of the pandemic.
“The development work that we are doing is obviously trying to grow the game. We are getting into the communities to introduce the sport because we believe that there is massive potential out there. If we can get that interest to start with, we can then start the development,” he said.
He further mentioned that their objective was to keep the players playing and they were trying to put in place the relevant infrastructure.