Nigeria On Standby To Host Of Africa Rugby Cup 1C

Nigeria has been asked to be on standby to host the 2016 African Rugby Cup 1C Tournament in case Morocco fails to meet up with obligations to host the tournament. Nigeria lost the bid to the North African country due to security reasons.

It will be recalled that Nigeria placed a bid to host the 2016 Africa Cup 1C in Lagos but according to Rugby Africa, after careful considerations, the Executive Committee awarded the hosting rights to Morocco as they cited security reasons.

According to a mail sent to the Nigeria Rugby Football Federation last week, through Coralie Vandenberg; the operations manager of Rugby Africa, the apex rugby body in Africa; she said “despite agreeing that host city, Lagos might be incident free, some countries could feel unsecure and choose not to travel which would jeopardize the tournament”.

They resolved that should Morocco be faced with the same security threats or no longer in a position to host the tournament, the executive committee will reconsider its position and advise sufficiently ahead of time.

Speaking with the President of The Nigeria Rugby Football Federation Sir, Fom Edward Pam in Abuja: he expressed his displeasure over the news saying that the move to host the African Cup 1C here in Nigeria is part of the Federation’s strategy to popularize the sport in the country. ‘However we will not let this distracts us from our goal to get promoted to 1B.

NRFF Confirms Date, Venue, For This Year’s Independence Sevens

The Nigeria Rugby Football Federation has concluded plans to host this year’s Independence Sevens after all necessary logistics towards a successful hosting of the tournament have been put in place.

Disclosing this over the weekend inside the mainbowl of the National Stadium, Surulere during the South West League, the Vice President who also doubles as the Technical Director of the federation, Tunji Fasimoye said “we are hosting the Independence Sevens which held last year and it is an international invitational tournament.

Speaking further about the tournament, the experienced administrator disclosed that more innovations will be witnessed this year as a result of improvement on last year’s tournament won by Police Rugby Football Club of Lagos.

“Last year, we had 4 teams from abroad in attendance for the tournament but this year we are looking at expanding to 5 or 6 teams”

Onikan Stadium,Lagos

The annual 2 day rugby festival which started in 2009 will be held between the 10th and 11th of October at the Onikan Stadium.

He concluded that this is just one of the programmes endorsed by the Sir Edward Pam’s led administration to expose club and national team players to the current global trends in the sport.

“We hope that it will also give our indigenous players the opportunity to actually know more and learn more from the game”

“The Sevens tournament is a good platform for us to actually push and promote the sport here in Nigeria.”