Daily Archives: November 4, 2007

In the under-14 International School Rugby Tournament

The team almost didn’t make it to London because the players
didn’t even have valid birth certificates that are mandatory for their
passports—a common problem in rural areas. Only timely intervention by
the ministry of external affairs helped them board the flight.“Getting
on the aircraft was scary, but fun,” said an obviously shy Hansda, with
an impish smile. Hansda can barely cobble together the words in Hindi
and the rest of his teammates speak nothing, but Oriya.“These
boys are not frightened by bigger boys and they tackle really well,”
said Tim Grandage, who runs the Kolkata-based rugby team, Future Hope.
Underlining the importance of tackling in a sport such as rugby,
Grandage, whose team is made up of children picked up from the mean
streets of Kolkata, said, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall
when tackled.”The boys are from the Kalinga Institute of
Social Sciences, a residential institution for tribal students in
Bhubaneswar and are part of some 5,000 tribal students given free
residence and education, from kindergarten to post graduation,
according to Achyut Samanta, founder-secretary of the institute.“What makes their achievement even more remarkable is that the boys started playing rugby barely four months ago,” said Samanta.The
winning team draws its name from the Kolkata rugby team, Jungle Crows,
which runs a development programme in a number of schools and
non-governmental organizations. The Orissa boys were trained by Jungle
Crows’ English Rugby Association coach Paul Walsh and Kolkata-based
coach Sellen Tudu, apart from Patra, also a city boy. The team was
formed only in May 2004.

“Being tribals, these boys are naturally gifted with fitness and
agility, but what made the difference was the hard training that they
did together,” said Grandage.

“We practised for more than almost five hours every day, morning and evening,” said Murmu.

“The
tribals from Orissa have overcome marginalization and poverty to do the
country proud in sports,” said Samanta. “Rugby was a totally alien game
for the boys and we never expected them to do so well,” he added.

Jungle
Crows’ victory comes at a time when junior rugby teams from Kolkata
have been making a mark in the international as well as the domestic
arena. The Tudu-coached Don Bosco Ashalaya team is now in Paris to play
a series of matches and Grandage’s Future Hope made it to the
quarter-finals of the All India and South Asia meet at the Bombay
Gymkhana last week.

“Only the top 12 teams from India make it to the tournament, which was eventually won by the army,” Grandage said.

“Rugby,
as a whole, is picking up steam in India,” said Agha Raza Hussain,
vice-president of the Indian Rugby Football Union. “Apart from the army
and the various police forces, individuals are taking to rugby in a big
way,” he added. Hussain, whose son Nasser is the captain of the
national team, said measures such as hiring a coach from Fiji and a
regional development manager from New Zealand, famous for its All
Blacks (rugby team), would help in a big way.

However, Walsh
laments the fact that big companies still don’t feel attracted to the
sport. “Though we have had a great response from some corporates,
namely, JCB India Ltd, BOC India Ltd and a few others, who support the
Crows, we were unable to find a sponsor for this tour,” he said.

While
in England, the boys stayed with host families. “They made such an
impression that there were lots of tears when they left,” said Walsh.
“Nobody had a bad word to say about the boys; they were tremendous
ambassadors for India.”

For now, Murmu, a class IX student, is soaking up the limelight and making plans of how to follow his dream.

No, he doesn’t want to become a professional rugby player; he wants to become a scientist.