BEVERLY HILLS, March 22, (THEWILL) – On the eve of the 2021 Betfred Championship season, one of the rugby teams competing for honours, Swinton Lions RLFC of Greater Manchester in the United Kingdom, announced a new partnership with the domestic rugby side, Kano Lions of Nigeria, as part of their Community Club Development Programme.
For the majority of sports fans who are not conversant with the game of rugby and who are unaware that the professional game which the eminent English war hero and inspirational statesman Sir Winston Churchill described as “a hooligans game played by gentlemen” is played by gentlemen in Nigeria, this will come as a thorough shock.
Rugby in Nigeria may not have the popularity of football, by far the most favourite sports activity in the country with the most rabid fan base across local and international competitions and imbued with a unitive character within the country, nor does it possess the attraction of basketball, another major force for sporting fans tuned to the best of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from America.
Yet, within the Nigerian sporting sphere, in that nebulous region where less popular non-football sports find a place of their own, rugby stakes a claim as a sport with a niche fan base that is just as devoted to following the game as it is played across the world and who go out of their way to render support and encouragement to their favourite teams whenever they are in action, just like in every other sporting competition.
Not only that, there is in place a solid development structure adminstered by head coach Gavin Hogg and a team, nicknamed the “Black Stallions”, that represents the country in rugby tournaments captained by David Akinluyi. Both these men have rugby experience in their years, which together they have brought to bear in the Nigerian senior rugby team as they try to expand the space for the sport to thrive and grow towards the recognition of deserves.
In 2015, Hoggs led the side he managed at the time, Bury St Edmunds to the glory of becoming National League Three London and SE champions. Founded in 1925 as Bury and West Suffolk Rugby Football Club, they currently play in the fourth tier of the English league system, National League 2 South.
Akinyuli, who started out representing his school in Cambridge, played for the University of Cambridge before other stints in the Old Olavians RFC from 2007 to 2009. He later joined the Birmingham and Solihull Bees on a non-contract basis for the 2009/2010 season. The talented player was selected in the Help for Heroes squad for the 2009 Middlesex Sevens and was in the 2009/2010 England Sevens Training Squad.
This is a snapshot of the experience in the anchors of the Black Stallions’ side and it has helped to forge the entire team into a unit with iron resolve to grind out results, but they often compete against tougher and more rugby-involved countries than Nigeria. This is why Nigeria has yet to qualify for a Rugby World Cup. The Stallions tried unsuccessfully for the first time for the 2007 Rugby World Cup but lost 6-48 to Senegal and 8-18 to Cameroon. They also failed to get past the pre-qualifier for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, falling victims to Cameroon again in a 6-26 loss.
That has not meant the Black Stallions cannot be reckoned with. They have competed in qualifying tournaments to put Nigeria’s name in the global checkerboard for rugby. For instance, Nigeria’s first ever rugby international was against the Sables of Zimbabwe on August 1, 1987. Unfortunately, it was a losing debut that spoke of the gulf that existed between both sides. The rugby minnows that the Black Stallions were, they took a 111-12 trouncing in Nairobi.
That heavy loss must be juxtaposed alongside the fact that the Stallions were only beginning to get their feet wet in the internationals and came headlong into a fixture against a Zimbabwean side that had benefitted from the popularity of the sport in the southern African belt with neighbours South Africa being one of the most feared sides in the sport globally with their Springbok rugby team.
The basis for excusing the Stallions from that debut whitewashing by the Sables is because they learnt from the walloping and grew in confidence and experience to avoid a repeat of such heavy loss such that by the turn of the 2013 Africa Cup, the Nigerian team recorded what remains their greatest success in the international game of rugby when they beat Mauritius 63-3 in group 1C of the Cup’s early stages.
A host of Nigerian talent that may have featured for the country but were either born abroad or emigrated for a variety of reasons are influential parts of the rugby squads of the countries where they settled and apply their gifts for the rugby honour of these other countries to the disadvantage of the Black Stallions. A full catalogue of all these stars with Nigerian origins will run into several pages but the most prestigious of them all is Maro Itoje.
The rugby professional, whose full name is Oghenemaro Miles Itoje, plays as a lock or as a blindside flanker for English Championship club Saracens and the England national team. He signed his first professional contract with Saracens in 2012, and made his first appearance the following year. So far in his rugby career, he has won four English Premiership titles with Saracens, three European Rugby Champions Cup titles, and three Six Nations Championship titles.
While it can be argued that he may not have been as successful if he had remained in Nigeria where the reception of the sport is below par, where the facilities and training are lacking and where the guidance and coaching cannot compete, there is also the argument to be had that someone like the captain of the Black Stallions, Akinyuli, who developed his capacity for the sport got his training abroad but still returned to represent his country of origin and captain the senior team.
Therefore, it does not matter where the skills are acquired, what is essential is that those skills are applied for the development of the game back home. That is where the partnership that the Greater Manchester-based club Swinton Lions reached with local counterpart Kano Lions comes in and gains relevance in the bigger picture of rugby growth in Nigeria.
Swinton’s Director of Development Damian Ridpath alluded to some of this when he said, “Swinton Lions have set out to support community clubs both at home and abroad over the last 12 months and we now welcome Kano into our family. We will look to share good practice and offer development support moving forward to the Kano branch of our pride of Lions.”
By providing such in-place support, the local talent can benefit immensely from the expertise, experience and exposure that may not have come about without such a partnership. Without the need to be uprooted from their familiar environments, the tactical support and technical investment required for mastery of the sport can take place in-situ for the benefit of the local side and local community where they are domiciled.
Swinton’s CEO Steve Wild added, “Our new partnership with the Kano Lions is tremendously exciting. We take very seriously our responsibility to advance the development of the sport, whether that’s within the UK or further afield. We now look forward to developing a close relationship with Kano, and setting some strategic goals which add genuine value to the partnership.”
Martin Crawford OBE, the Chairman of Kano Lions, was also thrilled with the new partnership. He said, “On behalf of Kano Lions and Kano Rugby League, I would like to express our excitement at the prospect of our partnership with Swinton Lions.
“The ancient city of Kano, located in Northern Nigeria, may be one thousand years old, but we are new to Rugby League. Therefore we stand to benefit greatly from a sporting and cultural collaboration with Swinton Lions who have been playing Rugby since 1866! The technical and organisational expertise that Swinton possess is exactly what we need to keep Kano at the top of the sport in Nigeria.
The Nigeria Rugby League Association (NRLA), founded in 2018 by former professional rugby league footballer, Ade Adebisi who is the Vice President and General Manager and chairman Abiodun Olawale-Cole, has worked tirelessly to make partnerships like this happen to lift the status of rugby in the country, knowing how beneficial it will be for the teams in particular and rugby in the country in general.
There is evidence of growth in rugby appreciation across the continent as awareness of the sport widens with highlights beamed to all corners of the continent by the widely popular Digital Satellite Television provider, DSTv, and many young ones following via their smart devices on the internet. In 2002, there were only six countries with notable participation in rugby on the continent: Morocco, South Africa, Namibia, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, and Ivory Coast. Fast forward to 2018 and an increase by 84%, Rugby Africa, World Rugby’s African association, has 38 union members including Nigeria.
As the former South African rugby national team captain, Jean De Villiers said, when he spoke in Lagos, at a programme organised by DHL in celebration of 50 years in business, which was also used to showcase their support for the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan, South Africa was able to take rugby to an enviable height due to the fact that the government and corporate organisations invested a lot of time and resources to make the sports attractive to young players.
That is a template Nigeria can copy. Side-by-side with professional partnerships in the mould of Swinton’s linkup with Kano Lions, Nigeria has what it takes to be the best in rugby if sports administrators developed it in schools and grassroots like football and invest enough, financially and otherwise, to build on what currently exists. Those are the ingredients that will see rugby become another arena for Nigeria to indelibly establish herself as a force to reckon with across the globe.
The time is ripe to pick this fruit up and make it work for the benefit of sports in the country.
About the Author
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
