Kudos to rugby administrators

’MATHAPELO TAKISI

It is indisputable that sports take kids away from the streets. Sporting activities keep them busy and prevent them from getting involved in a lot of reckless behaviour like drug abuse and all manner of crime. Because of this I say it is a good start for Lesotho Rugby Academy (LRA) to encourage the love for sport among students. However, I think they should be smarter when selecting schools they will work with and to supply them with playing kits. There are many schools in the rural areas of this country where students are not well informed about rugby; some of the students do not even know that rugby is a sport.

The only sport they know is football. Passion is not something that a person is born with but finds along the way, so for the children in schools to find their passion in rugby they should be fully supported; their strengths and achievements should be acknowledged which will help build that confidence in playing the sport. Litšitso Motšeremeli has done a remarkable job in establishing the Federation of Lesotho Rugby (FLR) which even scored membership in the World Rugby.

You will all recall that the FLR has been given two years to see to it that they meet the requirements for full membership in the World Rugby so we are keeping a close eye to see what they are doing to pull up their socks and secure the full membership. Do not confuse the two though. FLR and LRA are two different bodies because even though they were both established by one person, their purposes and visions are different.

The FLR was meant for all Basotho while the LRA is a personal body. However, I think the two should work hard together to grow the love for rugby in this country. Credit must not go to one person but to everyone ensuring that the kids who are the future of Lesotho love and engage in rugby. A lot of talents are dead and buried because there is no motivation and acknowledgement in this country. The right way to begin is recruiting the little ones from the primary schools since they are still innocent and are eager to learn new things. Their matches should not only be at national level but they have to go out of this country to compete with other schools from other countries to motivate them to put in more effort and attract other kids to join rugby.

This takes us back to the beginning of this column where I said sports prevent youngsters from being involved in unproductive things. If we have our youth focused and fully engaged in sports, they will have no interest of joining village gangs, or going to initiation schools leading to a reduction in child marriages, teenage pregnancies and crime. All I am trying to say is that if the kids grow up knowing what they do best they might end in any of the South Africa’s rugby teams. We can see a rapid growth in Lesotho’s rugby so much that we might end up as the world rugby champions in the long run just like South Africa.