Grass Roots Rugby Development – Starting to Develop Rugby in the Philippines

Let me introduce you to Aiumi Ono, Aiumi has been the New Rugby Developmental Officer in Cebu, The Philippines for just over a two months. Aiumi has been a member of the Philippines Women’s National Rugby team for almost 4 years now.

She started developing Rugby especially with women and young children when I graduated collage last October 2011. It’s a great challenge for her since rugby is not that well know here in the Philippines. Her long term goal is to see a growing /developing rugby community here in Cebu.

I ask Aiumi what were her greatest challenges to see if the rugby community could provide some assistance. Her responses were as follows.

1. We really do lack equipment’s and funding’s for the development of the sport.
2. It’s really difficult to get support from the Cebu Sports Office and other establishments for possible sponsorship because of the unpopularity of the sports.
3. We have a lot of women who are very interested and are joining our club but we don’t get to join competitions especially in Manila which is the Capital City of the Philippines because of funding issue.
4. All we do is have a small 7’s match twice a month so that we can keep on improving every game and to work on the areas for improvement.

You can contact Aiumin through there facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/PhilippineRugby or at www.prfu.com.