Redsaint
News: RedSaint's Total Rugby Part III
Redsaint
By RedSaint May 25 2008
Asked what they think of when they hear Six Nations B, most people will say the mini-section of the Six Nations that includes the tournament's regional sides – Scotland, Wales, and that team in green whose name currently escapes me, the one that has won precisely one solitary title since Fanny Blankers-Koen cleaned up the last time London held the Olympics...
Redsaint
Asked what they think of when they hear Six Nations B, most people will say the mini-section of the Six Nations that includes the tournament's regional sides – Scotland, Wales, and that team in green whose name currently escapes me, the one that has won precisely one solitary title since Fanny Blankers-Koen cleaned up the last time London held the Olympics...
Ask rugby fans what a second tier Six Nations championship is and most would say a year in which the standard of play in the competition is so low that Wales are able to win the Grand Slam. However, just like the IRB did until the late 1990s, most ignore the existence of FIRA-AER and the very real and very competitive set of international championships it administers over seven divisions, incorporating unions all the way down to Azerbaijan (which admittedly has about as much right to call itself European as Worcester does to call itself a proper southwest rugby club) at the bottom of Division 3D - the more palatable name for international level 8.
At the top of these divisions is the ENC (- the European Nations Cup - FIRA-AER Division 1 - not to be confused with the Seth Effreken political party which employed Suzie at RWC95). As Northampton Saints went about getting beaten in every area other than the scoreboard at Twickenham on Saturday 12 April, the winner of another not-quite-the-real-thing trophy had just been decided approximately 7,000 kilometres to the east, where Georgia beat Russia in the Siberian outpost of Krasnoyarsk to decide the winner of the 2007-8 edition of the real Six Nations B. The teams kicked-off the game with Georgia ranked 14th and Russia 16th in the world. Now, despite the received wisdom being that the level of credibility attributable to the IRB's ranking system is directly proportional to how high England rank on it, the fact that these two former Soviet republics were sandwiching Canada like two premiership footballers around a cheap provincial barmaid shows how far they have come in a short time.
At the top of these divisions is the ENC (- the European Nations Cup - FIRA-AER Division 1 - not to be confused with the Seth Effreken political party which employed Suzie at RWC95). As Northampton Saints went about getting beaten in every area other than the scoreboard at Twickenham on Saturday 12 April, the winner of another not-quite-the-real-thing trophy had just been decided approximately 7,000 kilometres to the east, where Georgia beat Russia in the Siberian outpost of Krasnoyarsk to decide the winner of the 2007-8 edition of the real Six Nations B. The teams kicked-off the game with Georgia ranked 14th and Russia 16th in the world. Now, despite the received wisdom being that the level of credibility attributable to the IRB's ranking system is directly proportional to how high England rank on it, the fact that these two former Soviet republics were sandwiching Canada like two premiership footballers around a cheap provincial barmaid shows how far they have come in a short time.
RedSaint's Total Rugby Part III:
საქართველო
(Sakartvelo, or Georgia, if you must...)
In fact, Georgia's involvement in rugby only slightly predates its involvement in the international community. Georgia really has only been playing for a very short time indeed - the game hadn't even made it to Transcaucasia by the time Wales last beat the All Blacks. As with most things Georgia claims as its own, rugby, like Christianity and cognac long before it, was first introduced to the country by an Armenian. When professional cyclist Jacques 'Jako' Haspekian turned up with a rugby ball in the capital, Tbilisi, in 1959, 20 people turned up at the session he held a local polytechnic to dip into his knowledge of the game like RFU blazers' hands into a sack marked "freebies".
The game was an instant hit, and Georgians, being like the Welsh very good at turning false histories into real ones, quickly became convinced they had been playing it for decades and began making up stories of how they would have once beaten New Zealand save for a line-out dive.
Actually, Georgians have been playing a game very similar to rugby for around two millennia - Lelo - which has now been adopted into the Georgian language as the word for 'try' and as the national team's nickname. Lelo is a sort of Eton Wall Game without the after-game naked conga lines, during which two opposing villages attempt to move a medicine ball filled with wet sand over a river creek or into the other village's church. The starting point is normally the halfway point between the villages and the 'ball' can be thrown, kicked, rolled or carried towards the goal. Opponents are allowed to attempt to regain possession by any means possible - tackling (but only above the waist), punches, kicks, and nipple tweaks are all legal - making it sound like a Pro D2 game in the Southwest of France, only Lelo is umpired by the local priest - meaning more authority on the refereeing side of things than in an Occitan derby. Elderly participants are even perfectly within their rights to use pointy sticks to club anyone from the other village, so maybe a game of Lelo would provide a perfect training exercise before the Saints' return to Adams Park next season...
Actually, Georgians have been playing a game very similar to rugby for around two millennia - Lelo - which has now been adopted into the Georgian language as the word for 'try' and as the national team's nickname. Lelo is a sort of Eton Wall Game without the after-game naked conga lines, during which two opposing villages attempt to move a medicine ball filled with wet sand over a river creek or into the other village's church. The starting point is normally the halfway point between the villages and the 'ball' can be thrown, kicked, rolled or carried towards the goal. Opponents are allowed to attempt to regain possession by any means possible - tackling (but only above the waist), punches, kicks, and nipple tweaks are all legal - making it sound like a Pro D2 game in the Southwest of France, only Lelo is umpired by the local priest - meaning more authority on the refereeing side of things than in an Occitan derby. Elderly participants are even perfectly within their rights to use pointy sticks to club anyone from the other village, so maybe a game of Lelo would provide a perfect training exercise before the Saints' return to Adams Park next season...
Haspekian, who had discovered his love for the game growing up in Marseilles, continued to push the sport in Georgia with the sort of boundless enthusiasm normally only witnessed by Naas Botha mindlessly espousing the benefits of the ELVs in devaluing the kicking game (which on the ironyometer is up there with Bristol fans complaining about others leaving games early) until 1965. Under the ethnic Armenian's guidance, rugby flourished in Georgia as the thaw in the USSR under Khrushchev saw the shoe-banging idiot who once sent an entire Soviet generation to death cotton-picking in a desert do one intelligent thing and repeal a ruling by history's favourite Georgian - Joseph 'Soso' Stalin, who had banned the game for being too bourgeois after Trotsky was once seen wearing a Cotton Traders shirt. Despite being outside the Olympic family - the focus of all Soviet sport outside of queuing for non-existent loaves of bread, shooting Bulgarian dissidents with umbrellas, and wearing 100% nylon underwear - rugby across the USSR went on to receive modest funding under Tovarishch Stagnation Leonid Brezhnev - a man normally associated with moving forward about as fast as an Exeter pick-and-drive, culminating in an unsuccessful push to get rugby included in the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
During this time, the SSR's first club team was founded by Haspekian's students (Qochebi) and Georgia formed its own rugby
federation, establishing what was to later become the Georgian Rugby Union (GRU), in 1964. The nascent body successfully set up games against a French Trades Union XV, the Penguins, and Headingley, who then-Soviet Cup holders Lokomotiv Tbilisi beat 17-16 in 1979 - the one point defeat for the Leeds club suggesting that they were a tougher outfit than that which now plays at Carnegie. Despite this, Georgians were forced to play under the banner of the Soviet Union until 1991, when that collapsed into a shambolic group of 15 fumbling individuals not unlike the Saints' c.2006/7 vintage. Georgian club teams had begun to dominate the Soviet championship and Georgians made up the bulk of the USSR team throughout the 1980s, which by the end of the decade was recording notable wins against Italy and a still powerful Romania. Soviet rugby was on the up and in 1986 the national team was invited to appear at the inaugural Rugby World Cup. The IRB never received a reply from Moscow, and there are two theories as to why not: 1) the Kremlin was afraid that the Georgians would all run away and start an Auckland-based khachapuri industry or 2) the envelope containing the invitation was never opened at the Soviet Rugby Union's offices, as to have done so would have created a Stakhanovite spike in annual productivity statistics which other sectors across the USSR would never have been able to match.
The Soviets' place in New Zealand was instead granted to Zimbabwe in a rather rugbyleagueesque move to convince everyone the game was already a global brand. Zimbabwe were to show their gratitude two years later by stopping off to play a Georgian XV in Kutaisi, where they kowtowed like Jack Straw meeting Robert Mugabe, giving the Georgians victory in the unofficial international 16-3. This marked the start of a blossoming relationship, with Georgia going on a two-match tour of the inflation-mad paradise in 1990, coming away with honours even. But not any land. Or votes.
What Georgia's rugby players did in 1990, the country as a whole did one year later, breaking away from the USSR and going it alone like the Mike Ruddock man management plan. Georgian rugby made about as much forward progress over the next 18 months as one of Shane "the diminutive dancer" Williams' sidesteps until the IRB incorporated the Georgian Rugby Union as its 52nd member in late 1992. However, Georgia was limited to playing occasional games against Ukraine and saw any able-bodied men of fighting age shipped off to a pointless war against South Ossetia - a territory so irrelevant that it makes Wales look like the inspiration for the Treaty of Westphalia.
An October 1993 10-10 draw in Cessange against 84th-ranked Luxembourg, aptly played on Halloween, was Georgian rugby's darkest hour. The result forced the GRU into a quick and decisive response; it injected fresh blood into the Union and from 1994 started work to regain its lost generation. Haspekian, who had originally come to Tbilisi to build ties between the French Communists and their Soviet comrades, saw his work revived as one of the first moves of the new board was to re-establish the strong ties to France, which remain in place today. The turning point came in 1997, when former Béziers player and current Coach of Russia Claude Saurel was appointed to conduct an audit of the game in the country. Georgia owes its status as an emerging rugby power almost entirely to him - he might not have replaced Haspekian as the father of the game in the country, but he certainly has Stuart Barnes-JSD parental-claim credentials.
Saurel first took over the Lelos' 7s team, taking them to the world circuit, and then took charge of the national team proper in 1999 after Georgia lost its two-leg repechage play-off for RWC99 to Tonga. The Georgians won the second match, but went out on aggregate. That they were even able to compete with an established second-tier nation was tribute to the building blocks Saurel had already put in place. With Georgia's lack of even the most basic infrastructure meaning it resembled Ceredigion outside Aberystwyth, decent sporting facilities were less common than Nottingham backs moves. Saurel saw he had the raw material of players, but no downstream assets to refine them, so, making use of his contacts in the FFR (principally Biarritz and France scrum-half Dimitry Yachvili's father, Michel, now the GRU's official envoy in France), he started the flow of -ovilis and -adzes to Pro D2 and the Fédérale leagues to give them experience they couldn't hope for domestically - former Olympic wrestler and Georgian front row icon Levan Tsabadze leading the way with a move to Bordeaux-Bègles.
While the France-based players were acclimatising to life as professionals, those left at home playing in Georgia's domestic competition were famously converting old Soviet tractors for use
as scrum machines, probably propelling the rusting symbols of the proletariat's wealth at greater speeds than they ever attained when operational. Meanwhile, the effect of the experience the émigré Lelos were getting in Gaul was immediate, with the exiles (including Grégoire Yachvili - Dimitry's bigger, elder, and equally very French brother) helping Georgia to claim the last ENC championship before it turned into a two-year tournament in 2001, a victory which saw Saurel awarded the Order of Merit by the Georgian government and a short-listing for the International Coach of the Year award by the IRB.
The ENC championship win, coupled with the promise of successful players being able swap a life of trying to find spare parts for Ladas for lucrative contracts and multiple-entry Schengen visas, thrust rugby into the spotlight in the Black Sea republic. When Georgia played off against Russia for a place in RWC03 in Tbilisi in October 2002, 65,000 spectators crammed into the capital's crumbling national stadium to see the Lelos emerge victorious by 17-13, guaranteeing them a place in England's group in Australia. Georgia's and Russia's football teams then faced off in a Euro 2004 qualifier in the same stadium immediately afterwards - a game which had been seen as so important that the great Vladimir Putin had even had to warn the then-Georgian President and former Gorbachev-era altar boy Eduard Shevardnadze of the consequences of a Georgian victory. However, by the time the game was abandoned at half-time following a floodlight failure only a few thousand fans were left in the ground, the rest already on Rustaveli and the streets of Tbilisi embarking on a week-long Chacha and Rkatsiteli binge to celebrate the rugby team's success.
Since that match, rugby union has been the unquestionable number one spectator sport in Georgia. Unlike in Wales, which erroneously claims rugby is its national game, the Georgian press does not relegate stories about a Grand Slam triumph for the national team from the back pages in favour of articles about the 32nd-best English football team reaching a knock-out cup semi-final. Tbilisi is now firmly a rugby city, unlike the Welsh 'capital' of Cardiff, where around 75% of the population can't tell you what colour their regional rugby team plays in.
This popularity did not equate to credibility or money. Seeking warm-up games before heading to Australia, the GRU sent invitations to 36 nations requesting games. Only Italy ended up playing Georgia, and Canada was the only other union to offer a match - which the Lelos were forced to turn down due to a lack of funds. When Georgia did appear at their Perth base for their first RWC campaign in 2003, they were something of an anomaly by not being a former English colony (Fiji, Tonga, Canada), a current English colony (Wales, Ireland, Australia), or a failed English colony (France) and joined Argentina and Japan as countries which didn't quite fit - which, happily, probably really pissed off Syd Millar.
During this time, the SSR's first club team was founded by Haspekian's students (Qochebi) and Georgia formed its own rugby
federation, establishing what was to later become the Georgian Rugby Union (GRU), in 1964. The nascent body successfully set up games against a French Trades Union XV, the Penguins, and Headingley, who then-Soviet Cup holders Lokomotiv Tbilisi beat 17-16 in 1979 - the one point defeat for the Leeds club suggesting that they were a tougher outfit than that which now plays at Carnegie. Despite this, Georgians were forced to play under the banner of the Soviet Union until 1991, when that collapsed into a shambolic group of 15 fumbling individuals not unlike the Saints' c.2006/7 vintage. Georgian club teams had begun to dominate the Soviet championship and Georgians made up the bulk of the USSR team throughout the 1980s, which by the end of the decade was recording notable wins against Italy and a still powerful Romania. Soviet rugby was on the up and in 1986 the national team was invited to appear at the inaugural Rugby World Cup. The IRB never received a reply from Moscow, and there are two theories as to why not: 1) the Kremlin was afraid that the Georgians would all run away and start an Auckland-based khachapuri industry or 2) the envelope containing the invitation was never opened at the Soviet Rugby Union's offices, as to have done so would have created a Stakhanovite spike in annual productivity statistics which other sectors across the USSR would never have been able to match.The Soviets' place in New Zealand was instead granted to Zimbabwe in a rather rugbyleagueesque move to convince everyone the game was already a global brand. Zimbabwe were to show their gratitude two years later by stopping off to play a Georgian XV in Kutaisi, where they kowtowed like Jack Straw meeting Robert Mugabe, giving the Georgians victory in the unofficial international 16-3. This marked the start of a blossoming relationship, with Georgia going on a two-match tour of the inflation-mad paradise in 1990, coming away with honours even. But not any land. Or votes.
What Georgia's rugby players did in 1990, the country as a whole did one year later, breaking away from the USSR and going it alone like the Mike Ruddock man management plan. Georgian rugby made about as much forward progress over the next 18 months as one of Shane "the diminutive dancer" Williams' sidesteps until the IRB incorporated the Georgian Rugby Union as its 52nd member in late 1992. However, Georgia was limited to playing occasional games against Ukraine and saw any able-bodied men of fighting age shipped off to a pointless war against South Ossetia - a territory so irrelevant that it makes Wales look like the inspiration for the Treaty of Westphalia.
An October 1993 10-10 draw in Cessange against 84th-ranked Luxembourg, aptly played on Halloween, was Georgian rugby's darkest hour. The result forced the GRU into a quick and decisive response; it injected fresh blood into the Union and from 1994 started work to regain its lost generation. Haspekian, who had originally come to Tbilisi to build ties between the French Communists and their Soviet comrades, saw his work revived as one of the first moves of the new board was to re-establish the strong ties to France, which remain in place today. The turning point came in 1997, when former Béziers player and current Coach of Russia Claude Saurel was appointed to conduct an audit of the game in the country. Georgia owes its status as an emerging rugby power almost entirely to him - he might not have replaced Haspekian as the father of the game in the country, but he certainly has Stuart Barnes-JSD parental-claim credentials.
Saurel first took over the Lelos' 7s team, taking them to the world circuit, and then took charge of the national team proper in 1999 after Georgia lost its two-leg repechage play-off for RWC99 to Tonga. The Georgians won the second match, but went out on aggregate. That they were even able to compete with an established second-tier nation was tribute to the building blocks Saurel had already put in place. With Georgia's lack of even the most basic infrastructure meaning it resembled Ceredigion outside Aberystwyth, decent sporting facilities were less common than Nottingham backs moves. Saurel saw he had the raw material of players, but no downstream assets to refine them, so, making use of his contacts in the FFR (principally Biarritz and France scrum-half Dimitry Yachvili's father, Michel, now the GRU's official envoy in France), he started the flow of -ovilis and -adzes to Pro D2 and the Fédérale leagues to give them experience they couldn't hope for domestically - former Olympic wrestler and Georgian front row icon Levan Tsabadze leading the way with a move to Bordeaux-Bègles.
While the France-based players were acclimatising to life as professionals, those left at home playing in Georgia's domestic competition were famously converting old Soviet tractors for use
as scrum machines, probably propelling the rusting symbols of the proletariat's wealth at greater speeds than they ever attained when operational. Meanwhile, the effect of the experience the émigré Lelos were getting in Gaul was immediate, with the exiles (including Grégoire Yachvili - Dimitry's bigger, elder, and equally very French brother) helping Georgia to claim the last ENC championship before it turned into a two-year tournament in 2001, a victory which saw Saurel awarded the Order of Merit by the Georgian government and a short-listing for the International Coach of the Year award by the IRB.The ENC championship win, coupled with the promise of successful players being able swap a life of trying to find spare parts for Ladas for lucrative contracts and multiple-entry Schengen visas, thrust rugby into the spotlight in the Black Sea republic. When Georgia played off against Russia for a place in RWC03 in Tbilisi in October 2002, 65,000 spectators crammed into the capital's crumbling national stadium to see the Lelos emerge victorious by 17-13, guaranteeing them a place in England's group in Australia. Georgia's and Russia's football teams then faced off in a Euro 2004 qualifier in the same stadium immediately afterwards - a game which had been seen as so important that the great Vladimir Putin had even had to warn the then-Georgian President and former Gorbachev-era altar boy Eduard Shevardnadze of the consequences of a Georgian victory. However, by the time the game was abandoned at half-time following a floodlight failure only a few thousand fans were left in the ground, the rest already on Rustaveli and the streets of Tbilisi embarking on a week-long Chacha and Rkatsiteli binge to celebrate the rugby team's success.
Since that match, rugby union has been the unquestionable number one spectator sport in Georgia. Unlike in Wales, which erroneously claims rugby is its national game, the Georgian press does not relegate stories about a Grand Slam triumph for the national team from the back pages in favour of articles about the 32nd-best English football team reaching a knock-out cup semi-final. Tbilisi is now firmly a rugby city, unlike the Welsh 'capital' of Cardiff, where around 75% of the population can't tell you what colour their regional rugby team plays in.
This popularity did not equate to credibility or money. Seeking warm-up games before heading to Australia, the GRU sent invitations to 36 nations requesting games. Only Italy ended up playing Georgia, and Canada was the only other union to offer a match - which the Lelos were forced to turn down due to a lack of funds. When Georgia did appear at their Perth base for their first RWC campaign in 2003, they were something of an anomaly by not being a former English colony (Fiji, Tonga, Canada), a current English colony (Wales, Ireland, Australia), or a failed English colony (France) and joined Argentina and Japan as countries which didn't quite fit - which, happily, probably really pissed off Syd Millar.
However, that was as good as it got for the Lelos on debut. Georgian hooker Akvsenti Giorgadze said before the tournament that: "Rugby involves contact. The history of Georgia is war, and rugby is like a modern war. On the field we do battle and it suits the Georgian national character." Unfortunately for him, warfare might suit the Georgian psyche, but they're not particularly good at it - all Georgia's group rivals followed in the footsteps of the Abkhaz separatists (who since 1992 have been happily knocking back cognac while waterskiing at Georgia's best beaches all the time flicking finger signals which, unlike their country, are universally recognised) in handing the Lelos comprehensive defeats.
Four Saints got on the score sheet as a full-strength England opened their world up account with an 84-6 defeat of Georgia, and Samoa also outgunned the Lelos a week later, winning 46-9. However, Georgian rugby came of age the following match, as they forced South Africa into bringing on the big guns to enable the Springboks to pull away for a 46-19 victory. Georgian rugby is a forward dominated affair, with their packs normally boasting as many kilos as there are zeros on an RFU official's bar tab expense claim, and they matched their more illustrious counterparts in the tight for much of the match. When hooker David Dadunashvili flopped over the line to keep the Springboks within two scores entering the final quarter, he received the loudest cheer at a rugby game since Erica Roe flopped out at Twickenham in 1982. It was to be the only try the Lelos would score in the tournament and their 24-12 and three-tries-to-nil defeat at the hands of Uruguay was a huge disappointment after promising so much.
The defeats did nothing to dent the blossoming popularity of rugby on the slopes of the South Caucasus, although turning up at the world cup did cost several France-based players their jobs and the union was again plunged into debt to meet costs. In an act of unusual speed, the IRB stepped in to help just three short years later, granting the Lelos a first Barbarians fixture in Tbilisi and entering them in its nascent Nations Cup competition in 2007, where Georgia placed a credible third behind Argentina A and champions Emerging Springboks. Meanwhile, the Lelos qualified for a second world cup by beating Portugal in a play-off and claimed consecutive second places in the ENC, behind Os Lobos in 2004 and Romania in 2006. Indeed, the inter-RWC years proved especially successful for Georgia, and the country went up in my estimation in 2006 when it managed to get kicked out of the International Rugby League Federation for pulling out of a game against Russia. The national rugby league team was comprised solely of union players, who then had membership revoked for forfeiting their training run out in V-neck Lycra shirts and instead choosing to play in a game of union at the scheduled match time.
Between world cups Georgia also underwent a bloodless revolution, under which the country adopted a new flag and subsequently a new national team strip. The choice of colours was a surprise, with the decision to use the English flag and the 2003 England kit upsetting the normal trend of rugby's developing world to desperately bumlick the All Blacks. However, the GRU may have had this dictated to them, as the country's growing player numbers saw it become a major beneficiary of the IRB's SOS Kitaid programme, principally thanks to England's Rugby Supporters Alliance. Georgians can be glad Russia is not yet a contributing nation, as instead of running out at RWC07 in France in second hand England kits, they could have been wearing leopard skin shorts, pointy boots, and scrum caps with mullets already sewn in.
The Lelos again found themselves in a tricky group at their sophomore world cup appearance, drawing the teams
ranked 3rd, 5th and 6th in the world in the obligatory group of death. The Lelos knew the only real chance of victory was against former Currie Cup strugglers Namibia, but refused to be overawed as they opened against Argentina. Strong forward play frustrated the Pumas, who only led 6-3 at half-time, before stretching away to a flattering 33-3 win.
Four Saints got on the score sheet as a full-strength England opened their world up account with an 84-6 defeat of Georgia, and Samoa also outgunned the Lelos a week later, winning 46-9. However, Georgian rugby came of age the following match, as they forced South Africa into bringing on the big guns to enable the Springboks to pull away for a 46-19 victory. Georgian rugby is a forward dominated affair, with their packs normally boasting as many kilos as there are zeros on an RFU official's bar tab expense claim, and they matched their more illustrious counterparts in the tight for much of the match. When hooker David Dadunashvili flopped over the line to keep the Springboks within two scores entering the final quarter, he received the loudest cheer at a rugby game since Erica Roe flopped out at Twickenham in 1982. It was to be the only try the Lelos would score in the tournament and their 24-12 and three-tries-to-nil defeat at the hands of Uruguay was a huge disappointment after promising so much.
The defeats did nothing to dent the blossoming popularity of rugby on the slopes of the South Caucasus, although turning up at the world cup did cost several France-based players their jobs and the union was again plunged into debt to meet costs. In an act of unusual speed, the IRB stepped in to help just three short years later, granting the Lelos a first Barbarians fixture in Tbilisi and entering them in its nascent Nations Cup competition in 2007, where Georgia placed a credible third behind Argentina A and champions Emerging Springboks. Meanwhile, the Lelos qualified for a second world cup by beating Portugal in a play-off and claimed consecutive second places in the ENC, behind Os Lobos in 2004 and Romania in 2006. Indeed, the inter-RWC years proved especially successful for Georgia, and the country went up in my estimation in 2006 when it managed to get kicked out of the International Rugby League Federation for pulling out of a game against Russia. The national rugby league team was comprised solely of union players, who then had membership revoked for forfeiting their training run out in V-neck Lycra shirts and instead choosing to play in a game of union at the scheduled match time.
Between world cups Georgia also underwent a bloodless revolution, under which the country adopted a new flag and subsequently a new national team strip. The choice of colours was a surprise, with the decision to use the English flag and the 2003 England kit upsetting the normal trend of rugby's developing world to desperately bumlick the All Blacks. However, the GRU may have had this dictated to them, as the country's growing player numbers saw it become a major beneficiary of the IRB's SOS Kitaid programme, principally thanks to England's Rugby Supporters Alliance. Georgians can be glad Russia is not yet a contributing nation, as instead of running out at RWC07 in France in second hand England kits, they could have been wearing leopard skin shorts, pointy boots, and scrum caps with mullets already sewn in.
The Lelos again found themselves in a tricky group at their sophomore world cup appearance, drawing the teams
ranked 3rd, 5th and 6th in the world in the obligatory group of death. The Lelos knew the only real chance of victory was against former Currie Cup strugglers Namibia, but refused to be overawed as they opened against Argentina. Strong forward play frustrated the Pumas, who only led 6-3 at half-time, before stretching away to a flattering 33-3 win.Wanting to rest players ahead of the Minnows' Final against the Welwitschia, Lelos Coach Malkhaz Cheishvili named a virtual second string to face Ireland at the Stade Chaban-Delmas in Bordeaux - bemusing Eddie O'Sullivan, who hadn't heard of any of the opposition. He didn't bother to try and find anything out about them either, presumably because he was still sitting on his backside laughing at the IRFU's decision to grant him a four-year contract extension. When a dogged Georgia went in at half-time only 7-3 down, everyone expected to see a repeat of the Argentina
game, but the Lelos stayed true to their humble status, remained on the pitch for their half-time team talk, and started the second half firing with winger Giorgi Shkinin intercepting a wayward pass from Peter Stringer intended for Brian 'I'm an angry little tinker me' O'Driscoll and touching down to give his team a lead as unlikely as Roman Abramovich ever setting foot on a trolleybus ever again. RWC dark horses Ireland regained the lead, but with two minutes on the clock the TMO was needed to rule whether a relentless Georgian pack had grounded the ball over the Irish whitewash. Sadly, Dennis Leamy was ruled to have his spade-like hands under the ball, and what would have been the biggest upset in the history of any sport (750-1 odds in a two-horse race in the casino I 
watched the game in) was not to be, Ireland squeezing through 14-10. Eleven days after that game, Georgia got its reward in its first ever RWC victory - a 30-0 hammering of Namibia before getting a standing ovation as a farewell as they
went down 64-7 to the hosts, with especial applause coming from an immensely proud 81-year-old Jako Haspekian.
game, but the Lelos stayed true to their humble status, remained on the pitch for their half-time team talk, and started the second half firing with winger Giorgi Shkinin intercepting a wayward pass from Peter Stringer intended for Brian 'I'm an angry little tinker me' O'Driscoll and touching down to give his team a lead as unlikely as Roman Abramovich ever setting foot on a trolleybus ever again. RWC dark horses Ireland regained the lead, but with two minutes on the clock the TMO was needed to rule whether a relentless Georgian pack had grounded the ball over the Irish whitewash. Sadly, Dennis Leamy was ruled to have his spade-like hands under the ball, and what would have been the biggest upset in the history of any sport (750-1 odds in a two-horse race in the casino I watched the game in) was not to be, Ireland squeezing through 14-10. Eleven days after that game, Georgia got its reward in its first ever RWC victory - a 30-0 hammering of Namibia before getting a standing ovation as a farewell as they went down 64-7 to the hosts, with especial applause coming from an immensely proud 81-year-old Jako Haspekian.
Despite boasting only eight rugby pitches in the entire country, probably less than O'Driscoll's Blackrock College, the Lelos' seminal result against Ireland gave proof that the small nations can cut it at the top table and it was probably the defining factor in forcing the blazers in Dublin to leave the 20-team format in place for RWC11 - much to the joy of New Zealand hoteliers and much to the dismay of the good doctor. The performance against Ireland was so outstanding it not only made the IRB decide to keep tier three teams at the world cup, it also made the Dublin Self Congratulatory Backslapping Club realise that developing rugby nations are a positive and not a negative factor on the international scene.
Whereas the IRB had earlier found the Lelos presence at the game's showpiece event to be as annoying as an unannounced vegetarian dinner guest, in January 2008 it recognised Georgia as a Performance Union, meaning the GRU will benefit from increased development funding grants and more regular international competition. However, it stopped short of placing it in the High Performance band, extended to four teams ranked below the Lelos, angering the GRU, which desperately needs investment. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, never one to miss a bandwagon, also rode the post-RWC euphoria, instructing Sports Minister Giorgi Gabashvili to ensure the construction of "ten top-level world-class rugby stadiums in Georgia in the coming years, one located in each and every one of Georgia's regions." He also promised the formation of a state-sponsored domestic league to encourage more Georgians to take up the game.
This last pledge is particularly important. Despite the IRB's praise for Georgia (and, naturally, its attempts to claim the Lelos' RWC07 success as the sole result of its near non-existent funding), it slammed Georgia for being the only team at the world cup not to field a single player plying his trade within the domestic structure. About 100 Georgians currently play in the upper echelons of the French leagues and the IRB wants this countered. (Although it didn't bother to point out that Georgia was one of only two teams in France to have a full 30-man squad of players born solely within its borders.) If the sport is to progress, the government must also stick to its pledges to grow the game, and ensure politics ends its negative effect on Georgian rugby - a state of emergency saw Georgia's latest ENC game against Portugal twice cancelled and visa reciprocation disputes with Russia did nothing to help travel arrangements ahead of the April championship decider.
Georgia's victory that day saw them seal their second European Nations Cup in their 101st test match, as they narrowly beat the Bears 12-18 in Arctic conditions with three inches of snow on the pitch and temperatures well under freezing. The country's new Prime Minister, Lado Gurgenidze, a confessed rugby fan, gave the team 100,000 Lari (£35,000) as a reward for their positive effect on the nation's image. Georgia's win was built on their front row, which included Goderdzi Shvelidze and Davit Zirakashvili - two props with Heineken Cup experience at ASM Clermont Auvergne, who presumably were able to gain the upper hand in the scrum because Russian physiognomies see fit to include a neck.
Props may still be Georgia's most high-profile export, but the Lelos' current team is not the forward dominated outfit of the past, where double-figure numbers were more unfashionable than in Belgium. Georgia now boasts a potent back division - thanks to the emergence of talent such as 2007 Georgian Player of the Year
Mont-de-Marsan wing Irakli Machkhaneli and Pau fly-half Merab Kvirikashvili. Kvirikashvili may have been a world cup star, but he is currently being kept out of the national team by starlet Lasha Malaghuradze, who plies his trade with the Kredo-63 club in the rugby backwater of Odessa, Ukraine, with kicking duties usually taken by hard-running full-back Otto Barkalaia, who also plays his club rugby in obscurity in Andorra. Couple these promising young players with the coup in signing Australia's revered backs expert and former Wallabies and Springboks Assistant Coach Tim Lane for the head coach role and the Lelos are likely to become slightly less NL1 and slightly more multifaceted.
Whereas the IRB had earlier found the Lelos presence at the game's showpiece event to be as annoying as an unannounced vegetarian dinner guest, in January 2008 it recognised Georgia as a Performance Union, meaning the GRU will benefit from increased development funding grants and more regular international competition. However, it stopped short of placing it in the High Performance band, extended to four teams ranked below the Lelos, angering the GRU, which desperately needs investment. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, never one to miss a bandwagon, also rode the post-RWC euphoria, instructing Sports Minister Giorgi Gabashvili to ensure the construction of "ten top-level world-class rugby stadiums in Georgia in the coming years, one located in each and every one of Georgia's regions." He also promised the formation of a state-sponsored domestic league to encourage more Georgians to take up the game.
This last pledge is particularly important. Despite the IRB's praise for Georgia (and, naturally, its attempts to claim the Lelos' RWC07 success as the sole result of its near non-existent funding), it slammed Georgia for being the only team at the world cup not to field a single player plying his trade within the domestic structure. About 100 Georgians currently play in the upper echelons of the French leagues and the IRB wants this countered. (Although it didn't bother to point out that Georgia was one of only two teams in France to have a full 30-man squad of players born solely within its borders.) If the sport is to progress, the government must also stick to its pledges to grow the game, and ensure politics ends its negative effect on Georgian rugby - a state of emergency saw Georgia's latest ENC game against Portugal twice cancelled and visa reciprocation disputes with Russia did nothing to help travel arrangements ahead of the April championship decider.
Georgia's victory that day saw them seal their second European Nations Cup in their 101st test match, as they narrowly beat the Bears 12-18 in Arctic conditions with three inches of snow on the pitch and temperatures well under freezing. The country's new Prime Minister, Lado Gurgenidze, a confessed rugby fan, gave the team 100,000 Lari (£35,000) as a reward for their positive effect on the nation's image. Georgia's win was built on their front row, which included Goderdzi Shvelidze and Davit Zirakashvili - two props with Heineken Cup experience at ASM Clermont Auvergne, who presumably were able to gain the upper hand in the scrum because Russian physiognomies see fit to include a neck. Props may still be Georgia's most high-profile export, but the Lelos' current team is not the forward dominated outfit of the past, where double-figure numbers were more unfashionable than in Belgium. Georgia now boasts a potent back division - thanks to the emergence of talent such as 2007 Georgian Player of the Year
Mont-de-Marsan wing Irakli Machkhaneli and Pau fly-half Merab Kvirikashvili. Kvirikashvili may have been a world cup star, but he is currently being kept out of the national team by starlet Lasha Malaghuradze, who plies his trade with the Kredo-63 club in the rugby backwater of Odessa, Ukraine, with kicking duties usually taken by hard-running full-back Otto Barkalaia, who also plays his club rugby in obscurity in Andorra. Couple these promising young players with the coup in signing Australia's revered backs expert and former Wallabies and Springboks Assistant Coach Tim Lane for the head coach role and the Lelos are likely to become slightly less NL1 and slightly more multifaceted.
The Lelos remain undefeated under Lane and will get their next shot at silverware at June's Nations Cup in Bucharest, where they have been drawn to play Emerging Springboks, Uruguay and Italy A - the first match in particular offering a real yardstick against which they will be able to gauge their progress since RWC07. Georgia also competed at the Junior World Trophy in Chile this spring, but failed to gain promotion to the elite Junior World Championship at the first attempt after blowing their favourites status like a White House intern in an Ospreys top, losing 20-16 to eventual winners Uruguay in their final pool game. This was despite being an incredible 19.5kg per forward heavier than the Teros' pack, a weight advantage normally only enjoyed by women over men in the Weatherspoon's on Silver Street, Wellingborough.
Despite this hiccup, improving performances at U20 and increasing post-RWC07 popularity at other age group levels promise a bright future for the sport in Sakartvelo. This is also clear from the GRU's development plan through 2012, which it hopes will foster the game's popularity so that it rivals and overtakes other favourite Georgian pastimes such as giving 45-minute-long toasts at dinners and selling watermelons on Moscow street corners. The goals it has set include increasing junior player numbers 25% every year, with a corresponding increase in numbers of qualified coaches and referees. The GRU also wants 50 school teachers trained every year to coach rugby to a prospective 10,000 students with the aim of 40% of them joining clubs and university teams who will then later filter through to academies and, eventually, the national set-up.
To this day, stars of Lelo are buried with bronze game balls placed atop their headstones in a display of hagiography not often seen outside of Western Mail articles announcing the second coming of the latest fly-half messiah, such as Arwel Thomas, and a similar fate may befall the heroes of the RWC07 campaign. However, if both Saakashvili and the IRB are serious about continued and long-term support and are not just point-scoring on the back of the Ireland game, their achievements could soon be eclipsed by the next generation of Lelos, and it won't only be Ireland who will struggle against this small but proud Caucasian country. Over the coming years, the Lelos will be looking to cement themselves as the seventh best team in Europe and, as Georgia prepares to celebrate the quinquagenary marking the first game ever played in the country on October 15, 2009, it's not inconceivable that their sights will soon be set even higher...
I still want Russia to hand them a well overdue beating next time though!
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