Born November 17, 1982, Albert La Rose has overcome many obstacles during his 10-year rugby career in his quest to become one of, if not the region’s top scrum half.
Long before the MVP awards, countless national team selections and championship runs in the regional Sevens tournaments, La Rose was just an average teenager with a lot a misconceptions about the sport.
“I knew nothing about rugby and since I had never seen it on T.V or anything I thought that it was like American football, but I learnt about the sport from my mother and from a camp that the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA) held nearly a decade ago,” La Rose confessed.
Presently, La Rose is a member of the recently selected West Indies rugby team which will represent the region in San Diego, California United States of America in the International Rugby Board (IRB) Sevens World Series next February.
This great honour for such a young competitor has been earned by La Rose for the last two years and he will be making his third consecutive appearance come February 9-10 2008 at the IRB Sevens.
Support from his family and coach along with countless days of intense practice are reasons why he has been repeatedly named to such an elite squad, but the road was certainly not smooth and there were many defining moments which helped to mould him into the player he is today.
“My coach, Laurie Adonis has always believed in me, and he was always there to motivate me with his pep talk or with words of wisdom to keep me going,” La Rose said.
“Although this selection was a very tough one for me as I had been studying and training at the same time, the most defining moment in my career would have to be during the 2006 North American West Indies Rugby Association’s (NAWIRA) Sevens Championship in Barbados, where I was playing for Guyana and the coaching staff switched me from the wing position, which was my regular position and experimented with me at scrum half,” he recalled.
The Guyana side went on to win that championship and even repeated their triumph with a second win this year. As for La Rose, he gained his first selection for the West Indies rugby side that year and found himself at the scrum half position.
La Rose has a very significant role to play on the WI side as the scrum half is the all-important link between the forwards and the backs, and are invariably at the centre of the action.
Scrum halves need to possess good ball handling skills along with a high degree of vision and good defensive awareness as they are usually the first tacklers on offence/defence.
La Rose is currently reading in the field of information technology and specifically focusing on computer repair, while attending daily practice sessions at the National Park in preparation for next year’s World Series.
He, and the other Guyanese members of the regional side, will continue the brutal training sessions daily until they venture to a preparation camp in Barbados in early January.
He expressed sincere thanks Peter Ramsaroop, Attorney at law Raphael Trotman, Ronald and Rustam Bulkhan of Precision Woodworking and mostly to his coach and mother, Miranda.
Player profile
Name: Albert “Coco” La Rose
Age: 25
Position: specialist scrum half/winger
Height: 172 cm
Weight: 160 lbs
Accomplishments: Most valuable player, Yamaha Caribs Annual tournament,
Most valuable player, Police Sevens Nations Championships, Trinidad Tobago, & seven consecutive national team appearances.
