The Rugby annual General Assembly Meeting

Sunday 20th of December this year, at the Amahoro stadium from 11 am to 4 pm, the Rwanda Rugby Federation (RRF) held its annual general assembly meeting as mentioned in the constitution.

All clubs were represented, journalists from different broadcasting agencies attended and the representative of Rugby Afrique and World Rugby Mr. Richard OMWELA who is also the chairman of the Kenya Rugby Football Union.

The meeting started with a prayer and the RRF General Secretary went through the agenda and gave the time to the chairman to welcome all attendees and also talked about achievements made by RRF with the help and support from its members, donors, stakeholders and sponsors. The biggest achievement was to obtain the full membership of the World Rugby, this mean a lot to the Union but also to Rwanda as a country. Rwanda now will be ranked among other WR member Unions and will have the chance to participate in different workshops, training and education programs and without mentioning the huge opportunity to participate at the Rugby World Cup qualifiers. He then talked about some challenges we face and the underlined solutions and measures which can be taken in order to move the game of rugby to the next level. It was interesting to hear many things which have been achieved for quite a short time which shows that there are so many other good things to come. Ideas and suggestions were provided by the RRF agreed to consider all and give the priority to the ones which seem suitable and fair to us as Rwanda Rugby.

It was suggested that clubs should start being self sustained, get own sponsorship and be affiliated to a school in order to increase the number of players, therefore have a good big base of players and organize as many loca

l tournaments as possible. Even though many things have been done, there are still weaknesses in different areas, this was confirmed that it will solved as soon as possible for better preparations at the National team.

And Mr. OMWELA concluded by thanking RRF and congratulated the RRFfor the progress and obtainment of the full membership of the World Rugby, he then encouraged the participants who are also members of RRF not to be afraid to ask any questions. “Everything has been done by other unions before you! There is nothing new, we, KRFU also learn from Unions like SARU and others becausewe always find that it has been done by them before; he said. And finally added that he is always happy to see the progress made and the vision of RRF, he promised to send the message to Rugby Afrique and World Rugby and always be available whenever we need him.

At the end of the meeting all invited were welcomed at the Royal Car Wash where they had lunch together and exchanged some ideas.