THE Green Machine will ‘rev’ into action today against newcomers Belize, at the Rugby Americas North Sevens championship in the Turks and Caicos.

Nine countries will be vying for the coveted title at the two-day tournament, set for the Meridian Fields in Providenciales.
Guyana are placed in Group C alongside Bermuda and Belize, while three-time winners Jamaica are in Group A with the British Virgin Islands and the Turks and Caicos. Over in Group B, Mexico will come up against Barbados and Curacao.

The Green Machine, seven-time winners of the prestigious tournament, will be represented by a 12-man squad blended with both youth and experience.

Jamal Angus will lead coach Theodore Henry’s team of experienced players which includes Godfrey Broomes, Osei McKenzie, Rondel McArthur, Lancelot Adonis, Avery Corbin and Peabo Hamilton.

Phibian Joseph, Tyresse Prescod, Oniel Charles, Jonathan Garnett and Lionel Holder are the other players on the team who will seek to regain the RAN trophy to Guyana since Guyana surrendered the title to Jamaica in 2017.

The team’s head coach had told Chronicle Sport, that he’s accepting nothing short of a top-four finish, adding “given the situation of how we’re seeded, it is highly likely that we can make the finals of the tournament. And in this tournament, getting into the finals of this tournament is anybody’s game”.

With Rugby, like many other sports in Guyana, not given the ‘okay’ by the local COVID-19 authorities to return to training, let-alone see any competitive action, Henry believes “this team has been thoroughly prepared in terms of fitness, but, match fitness is a totally different scenarios all together.’

“Like I’ve mentioned before, had we the opportunity to play some better opposition, we would have been in a better position in terms of match-fitness,” coach ‘Theo’ noted.

He added that “the fact that we’ve been doing this for quite a long time, this team has not experienced that as yet. I’m hopeful, that the fact that I’ve been there and experienced a lot of those heartbreaks, a lot of my teaching is going to rub off on them and we don’t have to start from zero.”

Henry thinks everything “depends on the mind-set that they (the players) enter this tournament with – if they’re going to go there and bring out that big-game mentality or they’re going to fold under pressure. We’re hoping that they bring out this big-game mentality that people know Guyana are capable of doing.”

This year’s RAN tournament marks the return of international rugby to the Caribbean for the first time since the COVID-19 global pandemic began in 2020 and also acts as a qualifier for next year’s World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series.