By Treiston Joseph
Renowned brand Guinness and the Guyana Rugby Football Union (GRFU) will host the inaugural Guinness Sevens tournament on Saturday at the National Park Rugby Field. At a press conference on Thursday, Brand Manager of Guinness, Lee Baptiste, highlighted the move to get behind the sport of rugby.
“On a more personal note, this was long in the making. When I made a trip to Ireland and was fortunate enough to receive tickets to an international rugby game and with the success of the local ruggers I can’t see why we can’t have that much enthusiasm home,” he reasoned.
Baptiste continued, “So we are paving the way and we hope to help grow the sport and the spectatorship because we believe the success of the players does not translate to spectatorship. We want to grow the spectatorship and hopefully the sport through different communities.”
President of the GRFU, Peter Green, was also on hand and expressed that with Guinness on board it will only bode well for the sport.
“As you know rugby is a struggling sport, especially because players are also dedicated to cricket, football and athletics, but the few rugby pioneers have helped the sport to be successful and Guinness has picked an opportune time to come onboard with rugby being eighth-time [Caribbean] champions.
“It will also give the ruggers as much games as possible since the team has been the Caribbean side selected to represent in Hong Kong,” Green mentioned.
Meanwhile, there will also be three female matches on the day and Secretary for the GRFU, Petal Adams, expressed gratitude to Guinness for including the women.
“I must say thanks to Guinness. I was behind them with getting the female involved and even though we don’t have a large pool as the men we got two teams and we hope that this will help the other women that can play the sport to come out and support rugby,” Adams highlighted.
The males will be vying for the top prize of $150,000, while the females will be battling for $50,000. The tournament will be a day/night event, with action set to start on Saturday at 15:30h with novelty events also included for patrons.
