GUYANA’S debut at the Cathy Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong World Series Sevens Tournament answered numerous questions and revealed new horizons that they will be looking forward to in the future of rugby. This is what was disclosed during a press briefing held yesterday at Olympic House which was hosted by the president of the Guyana Rugby Football Union (GRFU) along with the captain, head coach and manager of the Guyana team.
GRFU head Kit Nascimento kicked off the press conference by welcoming his boys back to home soil, disclosing that he was a very proud president.
He said: “I thought Guyana did extraordinarily well, given that it was their first time in the Hong Kong Sevens World Series; this was the first time they competed with the top 24 teams in the World.”
Nascimento went on to say that Guyana entered the tournament seeded at 24 and exited at 22.
Guyana have improved. This was a fact proven when he recapped on Guyana’s debut participation on the international scene two years ago with top-ranked teams such as France and Australia where they were defeated by deficits over 40 points.
Now, competing with the likes of Portugal and Russia which are also ranked teams, the local boys pulled a rabbit out the hat as their performance stunned the opposition even though the final result of the matches told a different story.
Ending his remarks, the GRFU boss stated that they have advanced and raised their level of rugby and they are looking forward to the future of rugby in Guyana.
A review into Guyana’s participation was given by head coach Theodore Henry who stated that Guyana had a game-by-game progression in the five matches they contested.
Guyana lost to Portugal (0-19), Russia (12-14), Japan (5-38) and Uruguay (0- 31) but defeated China (7-5).
The coach said that Guyana had a lot of unforced errors and also pressure- situation errors which resulted in the opposition capitalising on them.
However, the guys progressed game by game and learnt from their errors but still were overshadowed by the more experienced opposition that had little
room for error.
Henry shared with the media personnel at the briefing that throughout the tournament they were commended on their performance. “The Spanish coach personally came up to me and commended us on our performance and also gave some pointers on how to improve.
The coach even reminded me that South Africa was once at this level when they first entered the tournament.”

CAPTAIN
Ryan Gonsalves made clear that he was happy with the team’s performance. “We were threatening the teams and surprisingly in some matches we even had more
possession than they did,” he said.
Gonsalves, speaking on behalf of his team said, “It was unfortunate that we had only one victory but we take the win as a huge step forward. It is a long year with a lot of rugby and we are looking forward to it.”
Team Manager and GRFU Chairman of Selectors, Mike McCormack, feels Guyana definitely learnt lessons from the Hong Kong experience.
The first he stated was that Guyana belonged on the international level; this they displayed as they played with a high sense of confidence.
The second was learning from the bigger team by simple tasks such as sharing a dressing room with eventual victors Fiji and France. They learnt about how the team prepared and warmed down during game time and also that water-replenishing beverages are available for their use.
Finally, he said, having success at the international level requires rugby to have a strong base with players coming through the ranks from a tender age.