With the help of two charity organizations, an Irish expatriate has enriched the lives of 700 underprivileged children by introducing them to rugby.
While still unfamiliar to many Mexicans, the sport has ballooned in Jalisco in recent years, with many exciting developments taking place or in the works.
The idea of coaching rugby to disadvantaged kids first came to John Tobin at a Mexpat event in the Camino Real last year. There he met a member of the Rafa Marquez Foundation, a charity set up by Rafael Marquez, the former Barcelona soccer star who began his career at local club Atlas.
“The foundation is always looking for volunteers to teach the benefits of sport, education and good nutrition,” says Tobin, 38, from Galway, Ireland. He learned that night that “they feed 700 kids per day in two schools, and that they also teach football to the kids.”
Together with the Mexican Rugby Federation and the Jalisco State Rugby Association, he made a presentation to the foundation, offering to teach the children rugby.
“We demonstrated how rugby, apart from being a fun sport, has its own culture which teaches the values of teamwork, leadership and respect for authority and your competition,” says Tobin, explaining that “in rugby only the captain of the team can talk to the referee. This rule is always respected.
“Given that it was not soccer-related I was surprised to see how positively, with open arms and huge enthusiasm, they received us, and invited us out to give a couple of rugby sessions to their kids,” Tobin adds.
He led two sessions with local rugby enthusiasts in the winter. They taught the children tag rugby, a less physical version in which players grab their opponents’ velcro flags instead of tackling them.
Then, last month, four English coaches from the Tag Rugby Trust came to Guadalajara for one week to teach the 700 children, 30 of whom suffer from Down syndrome. The Trust is a rugby-based charity formed in 2002, which seeks to improve the lives of children in some of the poorest regions of the world.
“Having the Tag Rugby Trust over gives a focus and a special impulse to us people locally on the ground to keep pushing it,” says Tobin. “Hopefully some day we can take a back seat and the kids will form their own rugby club.”
Among those who came to teach the kids was the captain of the England women’s rugby team.
“The week was a huge success,” says Tobin. “Having such a caliber as the England women’s rugby captain here for a week was amazing. There are clubs that would pay a lot of money for that type of assistance. It was great for the girls who were learning.”
The coordination between the Rafa Marquez Foundation and the Tag Rugby Trust would not have been possible without the dedication of organizer Doug Galloway, a Scotsman who runs La Mata Tinta restaurant in Tlaquepaque. Galloway put the English coaches up in his house for the week, and attended the sessions everyday, despite being on crutches with two broken ankles.
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