Africa-Press – Botswana. Botswana Rugby Union (BRU) outgoing president, Sean Irish says his love and support for rugby remains intact.
Irish appreciated the 10 years he spent at the helm of the union but said was at a point where he was overwhelmed with personal commitments though promising to continue serving as a coach which was his passion.
Addressing the BRU Annual General Meeting which also elected a new committee on Saturday in Gaborone, he said the future of the sport was in grassroots development.
“I have laid down the foundation, our development structures are now on track. Grassroots development is more important to us. I have seen many young players graduate from junior teams to ultimately play in the senior national team,” he said.
Irish said BRU was not owned by committee members and instead, their role was to guide and drive the vision of the code as per the interests of its member clubs in alliance with the requirements of the governing structures.
Irish said the AGM was to elect a new committee, closing a chapter of his team which came into office February 2020. He said it was a norm that clubs would over time change leaders due to various reasons and expressed profound gratitude for the contribution made by those who had left various committees at club and union level.
The AGM he said was equally an interactive platform to carry out a postmortem of the union and chat way forward. “We will also look at our challenges and successes,” he said.
BRU has taken a decision to reserve two slots for women in the board, this being part of developments to align with the statutes of the World Rugby governing body.
Irish said some new board committees were constituted to enhance governance of BRU including referees, technical, financial, women and disciplinary committees. Irish said inadequate funds in the last four years of his tenure was the biggest challenge for BRU and because of that, key projects failed to take off as the sporting code started experiencing drastic reduction in funding from BNSC, making it impossible to among others review the constitution.
He said at the beginning of his term, the board tried to institute review of the constitution which he said needed an overhaul to align with that of BNSC, an exercise that remains urgent.
One of the latest developments to comply with is a request from government for all societies to re-register before May 24 deadline, Irish said and requested clubs to comply and avoid contradiction with Registrar of Societies.
He said clubs not duly registered would not associate with entities like BRU, whose existence was dependent on their membership. As for world rugby requirements, he said clubs were informed of changes to comply with, prior to commencement of the 2024 rugby season.
He said clubs must have a Level II medical personnel, coaches and match officials among others and non-compliance would result in severe punishment, top of the list being reduced financial assistance from World Rugby and deduction of points from non-compliant clubs.
“As of today, only one clubs has submitted a list of all its registered players. Any movement that happens after the list has been submitted must be communicated to BRU in writing, to confirm any amendments to the original submission,” he said.
Failure to comply he said had consequences with a direct bearing on the level of funding the BRU received from World Rugby.
“This are some of the low hanging fruits that BRU can capitalise on to get its funding increased,” said Irish. The last funding that BRU received from World Rugby was 35 000 pounds and P479 000 from BNSC.
Despite financial constraints, he said BRU was able to provide training and education, noting that a total of 364 certificates were used of which 40 per cent (145) were issued to women. He said training included Level I, Level II in coaching and match officiating among others.
In relation to developing the game at grassroots level, he said BRU started the development of the game with three Re Ba Bona Ha centres in 2020, in Selebi Phikwe, Jwaneng and Maun. However, he said Selebi Phikwe centre had collapsed because the trained teacher who was manning the facility was transferred.
He said closure of the centre reduced development activities and negatively impacted on development funding which was reduced from P352 000 to P120 000 though the technical committee was working round the clock to find replacement coaches.
reserves league. Currently, he said only four clubs managed to comply with the requirement.
Meanwhile, Farid Pandor was elected BRU president, defeating Boitshoko Tsiane. He received 17 votes against Tsiane’s five. Other committee members are vice president technical -Elijah Kokoro, secretary Osi Kopano, treasurer -Tobedza Gobona, Women’s representative, Keneilwe Modise was unopposed.
The position of vice president administration remains vacant as it was not contested. The AGM also managed to fill three of the four additional members positions with Simon Kanaimba, Thari Segobye and Dave Gilbert.
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