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 The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Rugby
Union Football Club (SVGRUFC) came into existence on Sunday 18th
January 1998, when the first game of touch rugby, was played at the Sion
Hill playing field using four traffic cones as pitch markers.
It all came about following a chance conversation between
the incumbent President and fiancée of Kirk Hobson Garcia at a Christmas
party. She had complained bitterly how she missed “her man” being able
to do those “silly man things” on a Sunday morning. This stimulated an
expatriate Englishman -Mr. John Townend- to return from his Christmas
vacation in 1997 with plenty of enthusiasm and two (rugby) balls.
John Townend contacted two Antipodean expatriates: - Mr.
Kelly Glass, a highly accomplished rugby player from South Island, New
Zealand and Mr. Geoff Hyde, an Australian tourism adviser, suggesting a
game of touch rugby the following Sunday morning. There were seven (7)
players at the first game; - Mr. Carver Alexander, Ernst De Freitas,
Kelly Glass, Kirk Hobson-Garcia, Geoff Hyde, John Townend and Delon
Williams, a local rastafarian who later became known as “Speedy”.
After playing for two hours, the group retired to Villa
beach with a crate of beer, to re-hydrate (any excuse would do) and to
soothe aching muscles in the sea. Rugby had been introduced to St.
Vincent and little did we know what we had started!
From the early days there was a strong interest from girls, who took an
instant liking to the idea of “touch” rugby. The games then continued
every Sunday, and it was soon found that in Kirk, Kelly, Andrew and
Scott Hadley that we already had some excellent and accomplished players
on the island. In addition we were able to attract other good players,
namely Derek Hadley who was visiting from Australia and Father Pope
Faifal from Samoa, working with the Catholic Mission. In terms of
the girls, Jackie De Freitas soon joined, together with some Canadian
volunteers, namely Janice Madill and Lisa Lilajehto. One other girl who
was to become a big favourite was Loretta “hot lips” Skrok. She
became notorious for her trick of taking a swig of strong rum and “flame
throwing” at parties. Peace corps volunteers, notably Becky Buster and
Maria Caluag also became great team members. The local ranks were
swelled by the contribution of Lorna “Turbo” Williams from Overland in
the Carib community; Delia King from Calliaqua Police Station and Yvonne
Bakker from Kingstown.
In the early days we were definitely seen as an expatriate
grouping comprising of Americans, Australians, British, Canadians, New
Zealander’s, Trinidadians, Samoans, and a few Vincentians. Rugby was
definitely perceived as a white mans sport and a relatively rough game
at that. We expanded our playing to Wednesday afternoons as the
numbers rose and in deference to the Hadley’s desire to “party” on a
Saturday night, we transferred Sunday practices to Saturday.
Despite our expatriate character it was the Vincentians amongst us,
notably Andrew Hadley and Jackie De Freitas who took the early lead in
developing the club, with help from Geoff Hyde.
 They
decided to call the team “Amazona Guildingii” after the rare and
graceful Vincentian Parrot, and selected the National colours of Green,
Yellow and Blue for our jersey’s and shorts. Soon afterwards those that
could afford it, purchased their own uniforms. The “Amazona Guildingii’s”
had definitely arrived. The first official committee meeting was
held on April 1st, 1998 when we selected an Executive consisting of Mr.
John Townend – President, Mr. Geoff Hyde – Vice President, Ms.
Jacqueline De Freitas – Secretary, Mr. Scott Hadley – Treasurer,
Mr.Andrew Hadley – Public Relations Officer, Mr. Darrell Raghoo –
Administrative Co-ordinator, - Other members co-opted onto the committee
were Derek Hadley, Carver Alexander, Ernst De Freitas, and Mr. Kelly
Glass. The club had twenty (20) other members. We opened our bank
account in May 1998, with the main signatories being Jacqueline De
Freitas, Kelly Glass and John Townend. We developed various
sub-committees for fund raising, comprised of Ms. Jacqueline de Freitas
Mr. Andrew Hadley, Mrs. Janice Madill, and Ms. Loretta Skrok. Organizing
of food and drinks, Carver Alexander, Yvonne Bakker and Jacqueline
DeFreitas. A sponsorship committee consisted of Ernst De Freitas, Andrew
Hadley, Kirk Hobson Garcia and Geoff Hyde was also set up. Coaching was
the remit of another sub-committee consisting of Kelly Glass, Derek
Hadley, Geoff Hyde, Kirk Hobson Garcia and John Townend.
After Geoff Hyde’s contract ended in August 1998, he returned to
Australia. So we selected a Lady Vice President, Mrs. Janice Madill, who
played a very active role in developing the club. We also recruited new
committee members in Ms. Delhia King and Mr. Dean Sprott. Coaches
were appointed, being Mr. Kelly Glass, Derek Hadley and Mr. John Townend.
In 1998 and 1999, captain for male team was Andrew Hadley, and female
captain Mrs.Yvonne Bakker. In 1999 Ms. Jacqueline De Freitas became
female captain. When Andrew Hadley left for England in June 2000, his
brother Scott Hadley was appointed as team captain.
With a large expatriate membership, it was inevitable that we would lose
players, and the need to get the game into the local population was
becoming more and more obvious.
Mr. John Bates of the International Rugby Board visited on July 19th 1998.
He assessed our progress in developing our Union and split us into two
groups to discuss our strengths, weakness opportunities threats (SWOT
analysis). This is updated in Section 2.0. of this development plan. It
is interesting to compare John’s synopsis of St. Vincent Rugby following
his visit and the present state of our development. A Development
Plan Committee, consisting of Carver Alexander, Jacqueline De Freitas,
Andrew Hadley, Janice Madill, Darell Raghoo and Loretta Skrok was then
established to develop our first development plan. This formalised our
goals, but only had a time frame of three months. The development plan
focused on fund raising and demonstrating the game in villages in the
countryside to make people aware of rugby. Although we all had a good
time demonstrating the game at places like Bayabou and Camden Park, the
problems with this strategy was not being able to follow up, once
interest had been created.
With the advantage of hindsight, we could have done with better follow up
from the International Board and their development officers. There is a
real need to push Unions to do their development plans and then for the
Regional Development Officers to monitor implementation and make sure
that individual unions have the means to improve.
We were in fact visited by the first Regional Development Officer, David
Rose, on the weekend of Bequia Regatta. We also had a visit from the
Schools Development Officer for Trinidad Mr. Ian Jeffries, during the
weekend of 5th-7th February, 1999. Although both visits were
helpful in stimulating our interest, they did not help with the planning
for development of the sport in the island. Travel budgets were clearly
a restriction at that time.
Since Mark Hewitt has taken over the role of RDO, we have noticed a more
positive and practical approach has been adopted. The running of a
coaching weekend in Trinidad during June 2000 was a great success and
did a lot to spur our own development. The under 16’s tournament held in
August 2001 has, at last, shown us the way to sustainable development.
The response we have had from the local sporting community, the schools
themselves and sponsors has convinced us that we are now on the right
track, but it has taken us more than two years to work this out.
GAMES AND RESULTS
The first game we ever played was against the British Navy Frigate H.M.S.
Newcastle, on the 8th February 1998. One female was brave enough to
participate in the game, one Ms. Lisa Lilajehto. Lisa later became
seriously involved with Derek Hadley one of our star players. They later
eloped first to Canada and then to Australia-one of the hazards of
having girls involved in Rugby.
Needless to say, “Amazona Guildingii” won the match and treated the Naval
ship to strong rum and a sing song at Beachcombers afterwards, in return
for a shield which still hangs behind the bar there. The event was
marred by one of the sailors diving off the Pier at Mariners Inn into
shallow water. He required 43 stitches to his scalp and was very, very
lucky to survive. On the weekend of 20-21st June 1998, the team
sailed to St. Lucia in two yachts, “II Restless” a Beneteau 36 and
“Joss” a 38’ Swan. It was a great trip and with 20 players, both male
and female. To our utter amazement, we won the St. Lucia Seven Seas 7
a’side Rugby Tournament, defeating both Barbados & St. Lucia to win the
championship. Much was owed to Kelly Glass’s inspirational leadership
getting the lads to believe in themselves and stay out of the bars, the
night before the final. Individual awards were given out to Andrew
Hadley – Player of tournament, Derek Hadley – most promising player and
Dermot Wilmott, for most points scored.The ladies played an exhibition
game and were presented with a shield to commemorate the event. Picture
3 shows Lisa Lilajehto collecting the trophy from the Captain of St.
Lucia, whilst Picture 4 shows the girls all together with their plaque
and other trophies.
We were visited by the AFRI/ Canada RFC 1998 Caribbean Tour on December
2nd, led by Jim Fix. The team later journeyed on to Trinidad, where they
won the Caribbean 7’s tournament. In December 5-6 1998, we took a squad
of 17 players to Trinidad and played in the 7 a side tournament for the
first time. Our President was known as “Joan” Townend” for bringing a
girls team down. Nevertheless, the Girls defeated a Trinidad and
Tobago team 35-12 pts and the announcer had great difficulty in getting
the attention of the crowd back onto the main pitch where the men’s semi
final was being played. (The final score would have been higher if we
had taught them to touch down before they crossed the dead ball
line!)This game virtually reintroduced Ladies Rugby to the Caribbean
(See Picture 5) and it is pleasing to note that in the year 2000
Caribbean competition, some 8 to 10 ladies teams will be participating.
At the end of the year, we proposed three players for Sports Awards- our
Captain Andrew Hadley, Coach Kelly Glass and Lorna Williams, female
sports person of the year. Lorna was awarded second place following her
magnificent performance in the Caribbean International 7’s in Trinidad
and Tobago. Kelly Glass came 3rd in recognition of his inspirational
performance at the St. Lucia 7 a side tournament, which we won within
six months of starting to play.We subsequently played against the HMS
Marlborough on May 8th 1999 and won again This time the post match
festivities took place on the Scion Hill playing field (in the dark-with
no casualties). Our team ( 8 players) journeyed once more to St. Lucia
on “II Restless” on the weekend of 12-13 June, 1999.That year, two guest
teams arrived from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Force , as well as two
sides from Barbados. The “Amazonas” were unable to play to their best
ability and did not win the tournament. They were going through one of
those patches where due to expatriates leaving, the sport was in a bit
of a lull. The tournament was also marred by a relatively serious injury
to the President, who although 52 years old had to play to make up
numbers, and in the very last minute of the very last match, tore his
medial collateral ligament badly in the right knee. We celebrated
in the Sports Independence 1999 on 24th October, where we had a friendly
match amongst ourselves supported by Mark Hewitt, the new RDO, who
helped us to demonstrate passing drills
Team B in yellow Fyffes T shirts won. A trophy was presented to the most
outstanding new player Isaac Egge and the award for most tries scored
went to Recardo “Yellow” Dallaway of Sion Hill. Picture 6 shows the
group afterwards.We went to the Caribbean International Sevens in
Trinidad with both a male and female team (22 players) on the weekend of
December 4-5. 1999. Although the Ladies won there first match against
Trinidad and Tobago, a stronger T&T side won the final 12-0 .
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