As Guyana prepares to host one of the events of the Central American and Caribbean Games for the first time, the local organizing committee headed by Guyana Rugby Football Union (GRFU) President Kit Nascimento is working feverishly towards completing preparations for the CAC rugby games on July 24-25 at the National Stadium.
The CAC games will begin on July 17 in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico and conclude on August 1, with the bulk of the match-ups being held in the host country Puerto Rico.
With the games soon approaching, Guyana is well ahead in preparing the national team and facilities for the hosting of the rugby games.
As part of preparations the marking of the rugby field and erecting of the goal posts at the National Stadium are currently in their final stages.
The posts which were donated, constructed and erected by BK international will add the final touches to the rugby field and they will be first sampled tomorrow and Sunday when the GRFU holds trials to select the final squad for the CAC games.
Nascimento at a press conference on Wednesday was recognised for the work he has done in preparing for the CAC rugby games and was encouraged to continue so as to ensure the games come off successfully.
Nascimento gave some insight into the preparations and noted the past achievements of the national teams while pointing to what is expected of them.
He stated at the press conference that “The secret is preparation, training and fitness… We would like to think that Guyana at this point and time is by far the best prepared, the best trained and fittest team in the Caribbean and Central America.”
He emphasized that although Guyana has only three rugby clubs and less than a thousand registered players, the local team can “take on” major teams at the world stage, like they did in Las Vegas earlier this year in the International Rugby Board (IRB) Worlds Sevens Series where they managed to draw a game against France.
“France is one of the founder members of European rugby and world rugby who are rated among the top five or six rugby sevens teams in the world… and we were beating France in that game up until the last 30 seconds,” Nascimento noted.
“It is a game where less known and less well prepared and financed teams can often take on the greatest teams in the world and compete with them,” he explained.
Crowd support
While indicating that the GRFU is expecting the national squad to win the CAC rugby games,
Nascimento urged the Guyanese public to come out and support their team.
“We want to see that stadium filling up with spectators. We want soccer players, we want cricket players, we want swimmers, we want every single sporting fraternity in this country to come out and support us at that stadium to cheer our championship team on, to show that against the best in the Caribbean and Central America we can be better than the best,” Nascimento declared.
The upcoming CAC games will register a number of firsts. It is the first time that rugby will be played in an Olympic-type event, the first time rugby will be played officially at the stadium and it will be the first time that the CAC games will be held, not only in Guyana, but anywhere in the Caribbean.
