Sean Nero

Leslie Fi­garo, pres­i­dent of the T&T Foot­ball Rug­by Union has de­scribed as "emo­tion­al" the feat of the men's rug­by squad which was named "Team of the Year" at Sat­ur­day's Spir­it of Sport Awards, held at Queen's Hall in St Ann's, Port-of-Spain.At the awards con­cep­tu­alised and pro­duced by the Min­istry of Sports and the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T, the se­nior rug­ger­men pulled the night's biggest up­set beat­ing out crick­et and hock­ey for this top ho­n­our.Fi­garo said over the last five years, rug­by had gone through a meta­mor­pho­sis and a lot of changes were made where all na­tion­al teams were lift­ed to an­oth­er lev­el. He cit­ed this coun­try's host­ing of the North Amer­i­can and Caribbean Rug­by As­so­ci­a­tion Cham­pi­onships 2013 (NACRA) as a ma­jor vic­to­ry for the sport.It was "ex­cel­lent", said Fi­garo, who re­called that T&T had the ho­n­our of field­ing two Un­der-19 teams in both the first and sec­ond di­vi­sions. This, he said, was made pos­si­ble when a vis­it­ing team sec­ond di­vi­sion squad with­drew from the com­pe­ti­tion.

As fate would have it, T&T's sec­ond di­vi­sion team emerged top at the end of the tour­na­ment.Fi­garo show­ered prais­es on the part­ner­ship the Rug­by Union now en­joys with the Min­istry of Sports and its im­ple­men­ta­tion arm the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT).He not­ed the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of To­bias Ot­t­ley, ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er of the Elite De­vel­op­ment and Per­for­mance Unit (ED­PU), un­der whose stew­ard­ship na­tion­al ath­letes were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a new lev­el of de­vel­op­ment."They were un­der his guid­ance be­fore they went to the Cay­mans. So the strength and con­di­tion­ing al­lowed rug­by to go to an­oth­er lev­el. They have re­al­ly added val­ue," Fi­garo said.The Rug­by Union of­fi­cial said 20 ath­letes were now ben­e­fit­ting from the ex­per­tise of the elite unit which meant what­ev­er cir­cum­stances hin­dered a play­er on the first team, the pool from which to choose a re­place­ment would be equal­ly as tal­ent­ed.

Fo­cus­ing on the women, Fi­garo un­der­scored their ded­i­ca­tion to the sport which ex­plained their top po­si­tion in the Caribbean.The qual­i­ty of their per­for­mance, he said, had made the women el­i­gi­ble to com­pete in var­i­ous ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments start­ing this Jan­u­ary in Las Ve­gas.The men's team is al­so sched­uled to com­pete in that US state, next month. Their com­pe­ti­tion ros­ter, how­ev­er, will take them to Chile to face Ar­gen­tine and Fi­jian teams. In Feb­ru­ary, they will ac­cess the US Olympic train­ing camp be­fore board­ing a flight to Hong Kong for its rug­by 7s in March.Com­ment­ing on the Com­mu­ni­ty Cham­pi­on Award be­stowed on­to rug­by ath­lete Kwanieze John for her pro­mo­tion of the sport, Fi­garo said, John had a life in rug­by."She has de­vel­oped in­to an ex­cel­lent young la­dy, well re­spect­ed in the fra­ter­ni­ty not on­ly in rug­by, but sport in gen­er­al. She has a lev­el of ded­i­ca­tion that is sec­ond to none. It is not about mon­ey, this is about pas­sion for young peo­ple and women," he said.Fi­garo added, "She has been coach­ing be­fore she was born. The fact that some­body so young could pull in such a cross sec­tion of young peo­ple is in­cred­i­ble. The mod­el she us­es for get­ting young peo­ple and women in the sport should be the mod­el na­tion­al­ly for all sports. She should be the first port of call. She de­liv­ers! The cor­po­rate sec­tor should in­vest in her be­cause she has a con­tri­bu­tion to make in sport and life skills."