By Emmerson Campbell
Guyana men’s rugby team, winners of six consecutive North America Caribbean Rugby Association (NACRA) Sevens titles, is currently in off season training, preparing to compete on the international stage in the new year.
The local ruggers who are the undisputed kings of regional rugby are aspiring to transfer their regional dominance onto the world scene. The team will have a chance to leave an impression on the world stage in March at the 2012 Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens tournament, the sixth round of the HSBC Sevens World Series 2011/12.
Stabroek Sport caught up with Captain Ryan Gonsalves who spoke about the team’s preparation and their goals for 2012.
“Right now we are doing some preparatory work at the National Park gym for the tournament in Hong Kong in March. We train three times a week, basically doing light strength training and ply metrics. From the first week in January we will step up our fitness training and we will start our on-field rugby practice sessions.”
“The union is currently organising for us to take part in a warm-up invitational two-day tournament in Las Vegas in February and also for us to encamp with the USA Sevens team,” Gonsalves said.
The rugby captain said that the encampment will be beneficial for the local ruggers as the level of the practice sessions will be high intensity and standard.
“Encamping with the USA‘s rugby team will definitely be good for us leading up to Hong Kong because we will have a team that is rated higher than us to practice and play simulation games with rather than playing among ourselves. The level of intensity of our practices will give us a feel of a real game so that will be good for us.”
Gonsalves said that besides winning the NACRA title for a seventh time next year the team has bigger aspirations.
“We have bigger goals than just winning NACRA again – we want to transfer this winning formula onto the world stage. We have already established ourselves as the regional rugby team to beat, it is just about making that transition now also we would like to be invited to compete and win in more world class tournaments for 2012.”
Stabroek Sport also spoke with player/coach Theodore Henry who echoed Gonsalves’ sentiments.
“I would say once again we have proven that we are the Caribbean leaders in seven-a-side rugby, right now it is about transferring our regional success onto the world stage and to perform positively. It is about us performing well on the international stage because we have already established ourselves in the Caribbean. I want to see us take it to the next level. We would like to get more exposure and invites to a couple more big tournaments, without that we cannot really get better,” he said. The year 2012 could possibly be a launching pad for local ruggers on the world scene.
