The Press Briefing ahead of the Asia Rugby Men’s Division 1 Championship 2024 took place on the 29th of April at the Hilton Residencies Union Ballroom with the participation of officials from Asia Rugby, Sri Lanka Rugby, sponsors, team officials, and media.
The Asia Rugby Men’s Division 1 Championship 2024 will kick off the Asia Rugby season with Sri Lanka back in action, in what promises to be a very exciting tournament with Sri Lanka hosting Qatar, Kazakhstan, and India. With a rich legacy spanning 145 years, Sri Lanka is one of Asia’s oldest Rugby-playing nations.
The importance of this tournament is that the Asia Rugby, with the blessings of World Rugby, has declared this Quadrangular Tournament as an “Environmentally Conscious Tournament”, which is a pioneering project for Asia Rugby to mitigate climate change and global warming, with them planning to implement the following –
- Green Initiatives: Partner with ‘Planet Protectors’
E.g.: New project named ‘A Try – A Tree’ to plant a TREE for every TRY scored in this tournament, as well as awareness programs on protecting pollinators (honey bees) to increase forest cover, with ‘Bee Protection Organization’, calculating the carbon footprint of air travel, local transport, hotel, and other basic activities.
- Calling for volunteers for the waste reduction plan, placing recycling bins in the stadium and conducting a post-event cleanup with proper equipment, water refill stations & reducing single-use plastic bottles for players as well.
The tournament will be hosted at the Racecourse Grounds in Colombo and will be played in a knock-out format, with Day 1 on the 30th of April seeing Qatar taking on Kazakhstan in the first Semi-Final at 16:00 local time, and the second game seeing the hosts take on India at 19:00 local time. Day 2 (4th May) will see the Semi Final losers playing for 3rd place at 16:00, and the winners playing for the Final at 19:00 local time.
The Championship Trophy, which is a 100% hand-crafted trophy taking inspiration from the coveted Webb Ellis Trophy (Rugby World Cup), was also unveiled at the final press briefing. This is the first Asian Rugby event taking place in Sri Lanka after 7 years, and with this tournament, Asia Rugby is hoping that more teams will show an interest in competing in Fifteen-A-Side Rugby, as most of the Asian countries are now focusing on Sevens Rugby rather than the longer format due to financial constraints after the COVID-19 pandemic. The main objective of Asia Rugby is to see the number of teams increase next year so that the tournament can go back to its previous glory days when countries played in at least 4 different divisions, including the top division.
The tournament promises to increase the interest of the fans in Sri Lanka Rugby at the international level as, according to the interest seen at the school level and club level, this is easily the most popular sport on the island.
The live-action of all four games from the Asia Rugby Division 1 Championship 2024 will be brought to you on Sri Lanka’s Number 01 Sports Channel – ThePapare TV. Stay tuned to www.thepapare.com and all our social media platforms for the latest updates from the tournament.
 at the Hilton Residencies Union Ballroom with the participation of officials from Asia Rugby, SLRFU, sponsorship partners and the team Captains. ){kind=link}