After successfully captaining the national rugby football team, Guyana Jaguars aka The Green Machine, to a seven-year winning streak in the region from 2005, Claudius Butts, 39, the Guyana Rugby Football Union’s (GRFU) coach of the national sevens side says, he is helping to develop the young players to bring back respectability to Guyana’s rugby in the region.
“The last time Guyana won a major tournament was in 2015. Then we lost twice in the finals to Jamaica in 2018. I aim to get them to the level of the team I once captained and then to surpass that. It is going to be extremely difficult but I am willing to do it with support,” Butts told Stabroek Weekend in a recent interview.
“We’ve set up a youth programme in which we are identifying some of the better under-19 players to undertake a series of technical work and classroom sessions to develop their rugby skills. The aim is to produce a continuous flow of players going into the national sevens programme. We aim to train the young players to play competitively.”