Americas Rugby News Rugby news from across the Americas!
An agreement between Venezuela and Uruguay sees the unions united and working together. Put into action together with the assistance of Sudamérica Rugby, the Unión de Rugby del Uruguay (URU) and Federación Venezolana de Rugby (FVR) have the ambition of capitalizing on and achieving notable improvement from different athletes under High Performance regimes.
The agreement will enable Venezuelan players to train, compete and develop in Uruguay, an extremely significant initiative to help strengthen Venezuelan rugby and further unite rugby in the region.
The longterm desire is to expand to include coaching regimes to further boost Venezuelan rugby.
The first players to be involved in the initiative are known. The first of them is Robert Torres (Maracaibo Rugby Club) who has joined Montevideo club Pucaru Stade Gaulois, P.S.G..
The others are Luis Romero (Los Tigres de Cabimas), Luis Zabala (Club de Rugby UCV) and Wilkinson Arrieta (Alcatraz Rugby Club). They are to also join P.S.G. All of the players are capped internationals for the national Venezuelan men’s team.
The agreement includes a clause which states that all of them will be available to play for Venezuela in international matches. Venezuela will take-on Colombia and Peru in away test matches in October.
The URU is making the High Performance Center at the Estadio Charrúa available to the Venezuelan players. This includes the clinic for injury recovery.
Venezuela is a Tier 3 union. The national men’s team is ranked 13th in the Americas. In prior years Venezuela had been notably higher. Presently Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, the Cayman Islands and Mexico are above them.
Uruguay is now officially a Tier 2 union and is seeking to qualify for a fourth Rugby World Cup. Los Teros face Canada home-and-away in early 2018 in their next qualifying matches. Uruguay are ranked third in the Americas being Argentina and the USA.
