President of the Guyana Rugby Football Union (GRFU), Kit Nascimento said yesterday that the squad for the 21st Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games will be named on June 13 following an intensive training session to be held that same weekend.
The CAC games will be hosted by Puerto Rico in the city of Mayaguez from July 17 to August 1.
Nascimento in an interview with Stabroek Sport via telephone explained that the final squad will be named on June 13 since the names of team members must be submitted by June 17 to the Mayaguez organizing committee in Puerto Rico.
“We will be selecting the team on Sunday the 13th June and we will be having the final trials for that selection on the weekend of June 12 and 13,” Nascimento said.
According to Nascimento, the technical director of the national rugby team for the CAC games, Joe Whipple will be arriving in Guyana on June 12 to conduct the trials along with intensive training which will be held at the National Stadium, Providence.
They are in the process of marking out the rugby ground at the stadium and the rugby posts which were donated and constructed by BK International will be installed next week, weather permitting.
“BK is constructing the posts and installing them and it’s just to get the ground ready… we are working with the ground staff at the moment to mark out the grounds, which will finish in a day,” Nascimento added.
Also expected for the trials are national players Richard Staglon and Ronald Nayers who are currently playing rugby in Trinidad and Tobago and were members of the Guyana team that played in the IRB World Sevens series in February.
And as a part of the preparations, the national coach Theodore Henry is currently in Barbados on a special coaching programme while a select 20-man squad is training every day in the National Park.
The training programme is being conducted by team captain Claudius Butts while the programme remains under the direction of national sevens director Mike McCormack.