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International rugby round-up

Roar Guru
5th May, 2014
41

Last weekend, international rugby was played on three continents.

In South America, the second round of the South America rugby championships, CONSURA, took place.

This is the first division and is split into two stages in a revamped method introduced this year.

Previously, four or five nations contested it. Argentina have won them all, except 1981 when they did not play in protest against the draw.

This year, Stage 1 will consist of a round-robin series between Uruguay, Chile, Brazil and Paraguay. In the second stage, Argentina will play the best two ranked teams for the new CONSUR Cup, likely to be either Chile or Uruguay.

Brazil, has already upset that mode of thinking by beating Chile 24-16 in the opening round in Sao Paulo. It was the first time Brazil had ever beaten Chile. In the other opening round game, Uruguay easily outpointed Paraguay, 34-10, in Asuncion.

Last weekend, Uruguay beat Brazil 34-9 to head the table. At home in Conception, Chile had to fight hard to beat a determined Paraguay, 22-18. With one round to go, Brazil could easily finish ahead of Chile, so there could be some moves for Brazil to replace Chile in the cup series.

Also playing its second round last weekend was the Asia Five Nations Championship.

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It has been a hapless week for Asian rugby. HSBC has withdrawn all its funding from both the Asian Championships and the Asian Sevens tournaments. This has left a huge hole in financing for Asian rugby.

The ARFU has already announced that the Asian Five Nations will be reduced to three teams next year. It will comprise of Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. This is a huge backward step for the game in Asia.

The results in the current series do show that it is probably the best decision, as there is a big gap between Japan and Korea/Hong Kong and a bigger gap between them and the bottom two, Sri Lanka and Philippines.

The results speak for themselves. The Philippines were promoted this year for the first time to the top division. A home, Hong Kong annihilated the Volcanoes 108-0, which did nothing to help Pilipino rugby. Last Saturday, in Manila, the Volcanoes again lost heavily to Japan 99-10.

In the other two matches, Sri Lanka has not fared much better. Sri Lanka get big crowds to their rugby games but this success does not translate onto the field. In the opening round in Seoul, Korea had no trouble beating the Elephants 59-3. Last week, playing in Colombo, Hong Kong again showed its class with a 41-10 drubbing of Sri Lanka.

Asian rugby is at a crossroads. It needs a nation to come up to Japan’s standard. Once it was thought that either Korea, China or Kazakhstan would become an equal but have all fallen away. It has also been suggested that Japan plays in the Pacific region and leave the Asian series. I doubt that would help or improve Asian rugby.

Over in Europe, the last rounds of the two-year 2012-14 series are being played, which will determine the promotions and relegations for next year.

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Division 2B played its last game in Odense, where Latvia beat Denmark 16-9. The match had no bearing on the division changes with Israel promoted to division 2A and Serbia relegated to 2C.

The other match was a 2C clash in Vienna where the hosts, Austria, beat Slovenia 20-8. This also had no bearing on the division changes. Cyprus has one game to play but is undefeated and is assured of promotion. Bulgaria has finished at the bottom of the pool and so will be relegated to the 2D division.

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