After committing to be a major sponsor late last year, Chief Executive officer of the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph company, Joe Singh yesterday announced that his company intends to sponsor the West Indies Rugby team this year.
Singh made the announcement while bidding farewell to the five of six Guyanese players who have been selected on the West Indies Rugby side which will compete in the International Rugby Board Sevens World Series tournament in San Diego, USA next month.
Players Claudius Butts, Theodore Henry, Albert La Rose, Richard Staglon and first reserve Ronald Mayers, will travel to Barbados where they will be encamped with the other West Indies players for just over a week before departing for the USA.
GT&T became the fifth sponsor of the Rugby West Indies team when they made a contribution of US$5000 to the team last November.
Singh expressed his delight in seeing a featured article of the rugby West Indies team on the IRB website adding that it made him proud to see the progress that the union has made over the past five years.
President of the West Indies Rugby Union (WIRU) Christopher `Kit’ Nascimento expressed his gratitude to GT&T once again and said that without their assistance, some of the preparation and training done by the squad could not have been accomplished.
“From the last time we were gathered here and GT&T joined the West Indies Rugby Union as one of [the] major sponsors, we were able to finance our preparation for next year’s World Series in San Diego, which would not have been accomplished without the help of GT&T.”
Nascimento also revealed that GT&T will be represented on the warm up outfits of the players for the 2008 West Indies Rugby Team.
The West Indies Rugby squad is grouped in Pool B, along with Samoa, Australia and World’s best in Sevens, Fiji. In Pool A are New Zealand, Scotland, Wales and France, while Argentina, Kenya, Canada and Chile are in Pool C and South Africa England, USA and Mexico are in Group.
Although the West Indies may have been listed in possibly the toughest group, Nascimento is confident that the West Indies Side could win the shield and possibly make it to the semifinals of the Plate in the World Series.
