Our very first Players’/coaches’ tour to Rwanda took place from October 30- Nov 7th 2019.
When we heard that the Rwandan Silverbacks were going to be playing their first ever Rugby World Cup qualifier match for the 2023 RWC against Ivory Coast in November 2019, we decided it would be a great opportunity for FoRR to send some experts out to help with the training.
We joined the team’s national coach, Claude Ezoua, who has great experience of the Ivory Coast as he is from there and was their coach for the World Cup in 1995.
We were delighted that despite having a very short amount of time to organise the trip we had an excellent group of coaches/players from Wales, England, Scotland, South Africa and France. The tour was led by our trustees Matt Phillips, Mike Jones and Mary Watkins.
Our team and coaching shirts were sponsored by Beddow Partnership
We took 30 large bags of kit with us (around 600kg) thanks to the generous baggage allowance from RwandAir. All of the kit was donated from local rugby clubs, Connect to Africa and SOSKitAid.
Read our newsletter below to see how the week went. We were also delighted to feature in ITV’s footage about the RWC.
FoRR-Newsletter-Players-tour-Nov-2019-Special-Edition
