The Ghana Rugby Football Union (GRFU) moved closer to its mission to establish rugby as sport in all of Ghana’s universities with a symbolic handing over of rugby balls to Sports Section of the University of Cape Coast.

The presentation was done by Mr. Bismark Amponsah, a Board Member of GRFU and executive of CentWest Rugby and Mr. Clement Dennis, a rugby coach and technical expert presented the items.

Present at the occasion were Dr. Daniel Apaak, the Head of Sports at the UCC, and members of his department.

Dr. Apaak emphasized the University’s preparedness to include Rugby in its curriculum as one of the games on its calendar. He stressed on the need to have some staff (coaches) to be trained in the technicalities of the sport to better their understanding.

He also stressed that starting next semester, the University will have proper budgets to support the development of the game and possibly push for the game to be part of the Ghana Universities Sports Association (GUSA) games.

President of GRFU Mr. Mensah who could not attend the event due to other commitments said in an interview at his office in Osu that this indicated that the event was a historic occasion for rugby in Ghana.

“University rugby in Top Tier Union countries such as in Europe, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa does not only play a very important role in the rugby development strategy but it is a crucial feeding source for both national junior and senior rugby teams,” Mr. Mensah said.

Mr. Mensah said one only needs to look at the popularity of University tournaments such as the Varsity Cup in South Africa and BUCS tournament in the UK to understand why University rugby is regarded as a vital part of rugby development and the fact that there is a World University Rugby 7's Championships underscores this even further.

“Even though the GRFU is going through a phase of enormous resource constraints we will pull out all stops to make University rugby in Ghana as popular and important as it is in the more developed Rugby Union Countries,” Mr. Mensah said.