By Neto Baptiste
Student at the University of Health Sciences Antigua (UHSA), Omar Rasool, apart from pursuing his medical degree, has been creating waves in Falmouth and the surrounding communities with his keen interest in touch rugby, a sport he hopes to grow within the twin island state.
The Ireland national, who arrived in Antigua in January this year, has been organising regular rugby scrimmages in Falmouth since then, and he wants the entire country to get involved, in hopes of one day seeing Antigua and Barbuda represented at the regional and international levels.
“It’s a local expat community or foreigner community that plays socially, so we play touch rugby which is easier to introduce, so for younger people in schools and so on, they don’t want to go straight into contact rugby because it’s a big step forward. What we have done is that on Thursday nights we have a get-together for about an hour-and-a-half playing in Falmouth, and from that we hope to create a rugby team for Antigua, and then who knows what the future may hold,” he said.
Speaking on the Good Morning Jojo sports show, Rasool who is also an avid cricketer, said the response has been encouraging thus far, as they seek to build momentum towards hosting a more structured event.
“On Thursday nights for rugby, we get about 10 to 15 in the off-season, but during the season when all of the yachties come in it blows up, so then it really blows up in terms of population so we could have 40 people playing so we split into four teams, get together and then go and create a community together and what not,” he said.
The medical student who plans to be in Antigua until December 2025, said the education process in terms of teaching the game to young players is continuous, while there are plans for a tour in the near future.
“Thankfully, some of our people are living here long term, and they have brought some people from schools in Antigua to try and introduce rugby to them, so the response has been good. We have people coming and wondering what is this oval ball being thrown backwards which is kind of cool. We’ve planned for a tour at the end of the year to go to one of the other local islands that already has a decent rugby set-up,” Rasool said.
Sessions in Falmouth begin at 5:30pm every Thursday.
