THE GUYANA Rugby Football Union (GRFU) National 7s Team yesterday breathed a sigh of relief when the Guyana Olympic Association (GOA) came up big to offset a number of expenses, totalling $14M. With the team gearing for one of their busiest years in recent history and a series of possibly history-making tournaments to participate in, funding has been a huge burden for the GRFU to carry.

Hence, president of the GOA, K. Juman-Yassin, at its High Street Georgetown headquarters, told the gathering of media and other officials of the GRFU, his entity will be taking care of the ‘Green Machine’s expenses for the first Olympic Qualifier in North Carolina (June 13-14) along with the Pan Am Championships in Toronto, Canada from July 11 to 12.
Yassin said that money will total in excess of $14M, covering the team’s airfare, meals, accommodation, the bringing home of overseas-based players and other expenses, much to the delight of GRFU president Peter Green, who was also present.
“After dialogue with the Union, we came up with some of the factors that the Guyana Olympic Association will be responsible for. The budget that we got for the Union for the team to go to North Carolina is $6 532 680 and we will cover that,” Yassin said.
The GOA head added, “The Olympic Association will also be covering the Pan American team’s preparation before they leave for those Games and that includes training expenses, supplements, and medical examinations.”
According to Juman-Yassin, “The GOA will also be covering airfare for overseas players to Guyana from the USA along with their accommodation, meals and transportation and that comes up roughly to $990 600 and we will also be covering the team going to the Pan American Games which comes up to $5 527 200.”
He said the GOA’s assistance will now allow the GRFU to put all their attention and focus on the team’s preparation, instead of hunting through the wilderness of corporate Guyana to ‘beg’ for funding.
“The GOA has done its job so that heartache and burden that the rugby union usually has to go out and beg, we have taken that off their shoulders so that they can concentrate on the important aspect – a well-prepared team,” said Juman-Yassin.
The GRFU recently acquired the services of Angus Thompson who will serve as Technical Director of the team and the GOA has also covered the expenses surrounding his tenure with the team which Juman-Yassin said is in the vicinity of $3.7M.
Prior to their engagements in North Carolina and Canada, the North American and Caribbean Rugby Association (NACRA) Champions will first travel to Hong Kong where they feature in the HSBC Hong Kong 7s tournament from March 27 to 29.
“We are not going to Hong Kong as a training exercise; we are going to Hong Kong to do Guyana proud. We start on the competition the very first game of the whole tournament at 09:00hrs on Friday against Zimbabwe and I can assure you that we will be going out from the first whistle to beat Zimbabwe,” said Thompson, as he spoke of how useful the series in Hong Kong will be to help them put together the best team for the tournaments in the USA and Canada.

(By Rawle Toney)