Hello, my name is Alex. Alex Korytkin. I am the chairman of Rugby Federation of Amur Region. Sounds like a big deal, doesn’t it? Hey… but one of our best achievements for the last couple of few years is that we still exist. So you decide is it big or not?
I already see the question in you eyes where is Amur region? Ok, it is in Russia. Yes, Russians can play rugby. How good we are? Well, we scored two tries against Ireland, three against Italy and three against Australia on RWC 2011. But yes, we will miss next World Cup in England. So Russian national team is not that great but it is not that bad either. But here we have different story.
I live in Blagoveschensk. It is not so big city (if we think about other cities in Russia). It is in the Far East of Russia (Dalniy Vostok) on the bank of Amur River. We are 7 hours by plain or 6 days by train from Moscow. But actually our Rugby Capital is in Krasnoyarsk but it is still about 3000 km from us. The most interesting thing of our situation from geographical point of view is China on the opposite bank of Amur River. But Chinese don’t play rugby at all they prefer basketball…
Rugby Federation of Amur region… We created this organization to give rugby official status here. At this moment we have about 50 players of different ages. By the way Amur region is bigger than Japan but less than France. And we have only 50 players… But 7 years ago we had no one. Yes, we still never play fifteens but our dream is still alive and we still play rugby.
Let’s see. Rugby is an excellent game, vivid action, great atmosphere, tremendous spirit. But it is not popular in Russia. Russia, like many countries is a land of football, I mean association football (soccor). Russians also like ice hockey, volleyball and basketball. Only small amount of people like rugby, play rugby and know rugby. That’s funny but here if your ask people what they know about rugby most say about oval ball, huge helmets and shoulder pads. Just like that.
But we have National Rugby Championship and several professional clubs. We have great women sevens team. Few of our rugby players play in England and France. We organized Rugby Sevens World Cup in 2013. We have amateurs club where real rugby spirit lives. And if Russia would be twenty times less in territory we could be the great rugby nation with such achievements. But for such big country we dont have enough to fill stadium during Sevens World Cup final.
This is a story about the pioneers of Amur rugby, my club and my team – AMUR TIGERS. It is unfinished story about our passion to be the part of that great game. Sometimes I notice that our rugby development looks like a century ago but in modern environment. The nearest rather good rugby team is in 1500 kilometers from us, the nearest real rugby field is in Japan. We are like barbarians in the world of rugby, found the ball and for the next seven years have been trying to use it properly.
We are realists. We don’t want to be the world champions. We don’t want to be the part of Waratahs or Toulon. We want play rugby.