By Emmerson Campbell
The Guyana Rugby Football Union (GRFU) held its final Trial game yesterday at the National Park to select the national Sevens team which will participate in the Las Vegas Invitational Sevens from February 9 to 11.
The Las Vegas tournament will serve as a warm-up ahead of the team’s participation at the HSBC Sevens World Series in Hong Kong from March 23 to 25.
It is expected to provide the players with the elite level of competition essential for their preparation for the Hong Kong Sevens.
The regional ‘kings’ of rugby earned a place at the HSBC Sevens World Series after they won their sixth consecutive North America Caribbean Rugby Association (NACRA) title last year November in Barbados by demolishing the Cayman Islands by 29 points to nil.
The team’s participation at the Las Vegas Invitational Sevens was made possible after President Donald Ramotar on Friday presented the GRFU with a cheque worth five million dollars.
If the local team does well at the Las Vegas tournament, it will perhaps give them the necessary confidence they need to succeed in Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong tournament is very important to the Guyana side as it is one of the pathways to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. Hong Kong will also serve as a Qualification Tournament that can possibly make Guyana a Core team.
Players on Core Teams become semi professionals and are also paid as semi professionals. Core Teams are also invited and accommodated free of cost to all of the HSBC tournaments.
President of the GRFU, Kit Nascimento, had a pep talk with the players yesterday where he urged them to do their best and make Guyana proud. He highlighted to the players the fact that they ought to look ahead as this was just the beginning of something special.
Nascimento also informed the players that if they do not make the team to Las Vegas, it does not necessarily mean that they would not make the team to Hong Kong and he encouraged those who will not be selected to stay with the programme.
The GRFU boss also told the players that the 15’s rugby World Cup qualifier starts in May and it is not good enough that they are the number two team in the Caribbean so they are a lot of challenges ahead. The Caribbean’s number one 15’s team is Bermuda.
The players shortlisted for the Las Vegas tournament are as follows: Claudius Butts, Ryan Gonslaves, Theodore Henry, Dwayne Schroeder, Claude Alexander, Blaize Bailey, Rickford Cummings, Christopher Singh, Walter George, Troy Bascombe, Rondell Hutson, Kester Lowe, Breon Walks, Cyon Kitt, Clive Prowell, Leon Greaves, Avery Corbin, Elwin Chase, Valon Adams, UK based Rupert Giles and Trinidad and Tobago based Richard Staglon, Ryan Hinckson and Ronald Mayers.
The final 12 will be named today and the team is schedule to wing out on February 6.
