By Emmerson Campbell
After six years of ruling the NACRA Sevens rugby kingdom, Guyana, the regional kings of rugby have been dethroned by Mexico which placed third overall behind Canada and USA in the recently concluded NACRA World Cup Qualifiers in Ottawa, Canada.
Despite winning three matches and the Plate by mauling Trinidad and Tobago 27-0 in the Plate final, an upset loss to Barbados in the preliminaries (12 to 19) and defeat at the hands of Mexico in the quarterfinals (17 to 14) ended the hopes of the Guyana Jaguars lifting their seventh consecutive title.
According to president of the Guyana Rugby Football Union (GRFU), Col. John Lewis however, the team’s disappointment is just a speed bump on their road to redemption as the necessary patch work will be done in order for the local ruggers to regain the NACRA Sevens title next year.
Said Lewis: “We definitely have to get better preparation because we would be doing virtually nothing in terms of where seven a-side rugby is concerned apart from local competitions. We have to try to get some funding to go to tournaments to adequately prepare us to regain our title.”
He continued “We did not have a chance to play any top notch rugby before this tournament this year. Last year, because we had won the NACRA Sevens the year before in 2010, we went to the Pan Am Games and following that was the NACRA Sevens and we defeated every team, Mexico, Cayman (Islands), every team simply because we had gone through the Pan An Games a month or two earlier.”
Lewis reiterated that once the team had adequate funding, they would have easily won their seventh consecutive title.
“Definitely if the funding had been there for us to go to Canada for like two weeks before the tournament to get a couple of warm up matches definitely we would have swept the field and retained our title.”
The GRFU boss also stated that the team’s spirit and chemistry was also affected due to visa issues with Trinidad and Tobago based starting forwards, Richard Staglon and Ronald Mayers.
“We had problems getting there and this affected all the members of the team. We had three guys in Trinidad, two were denied visas on their first application, we went back and we spoke with the Canadian High Commission and they eventually got the visas but they didn’t go up there I think until Thursday or Friday night so that was tough on the team’s morale and it was tough on them.”
Lewis stated that for next year’s tournament, the union will try to fly in the overseas based players to gel and play as a unit.
“We will have to try to bring home our overseas-based players. We’ve got Rupert Giles in England we could not bring him here; we had to send him straight to Canada; we had three players in Trinidad and we could not even afford to bring them here to have a run with the guys before going to Canada; they had to go direct and then there is Kevin McKenzie who has been and still is one of our best players.”
McKenzie, who plays league rugby in Australia, missed the tournament because Lewis said the cost was too much for the union to bear.
“To bring him here to work with the team before going to Canada would have cost $US7000 and there is no way we could have afforded that and that man Kevin McKenzie is a top notch player. He would have made a huge difference because he is an impact player.”
Lewis, in closing, said that when the team returns, they will temporarily switch their attention to 15s rugby as there would be a 15-a-side tournament in Tobago in December.
The national team is expected to return to Guyana tomorrow.
