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Wrestling with the way forward for rugby in Mongolia
What have you learnt about sumo?
When future Courageous Blossoms captain Michael Leitch first arrived in Japan as a 15-year-old, he thought he had a basic thought. However then he began clocking who was profitable prime tournaments and the seedling of an thought lodged in his mind. In the present day, he takes motion.
He tells Rugby World: “Once I first came to visit right here, I realised that every one the highest sumo wrestlers in Japan had been really Mongolian. And I assumed that was fascinating.
“They might all communicate good Japanese. So I appeared into the background story and a whole lot of them had been scouted in childhood – like 15 or 16 – and had been taken into what you’d name a sumo camp or secure. They simply educated and educated and educated and have become these prime sumo wrestlers.
“And these guys are huge, you understand. They’re large guys. So I assumed, in the event you might get one in all these guys to play rugby, that’d be superior. Within the entrance row, like a tighthead. Since you don’t have to have the aptitude or something like that, they only must be huge and powerful.
Michael Leitch main the way in which for Japan, 2019 (Getty Photos)
“So going to Mongolia, I assumed there ought to be a heap of Mongolian children over there which have that potential to play within the entrance row.”
Sure, Leitch headed to Mongolia. And in 2019, a younger man headed again the opposite approach.
Due to a plan Leitch cooked up with Austin Gansukh of the Mongolian rugby union, they appealed for expertise through social and conventional media campaigns, in addition to courting the views of youth and faculty coaches, earlier than operating a strategy of scouting and screening classes.
After whittling down the numbers they lastly recognized younger Norovsambuu ‘Norvoo’ Davaajav as the best participant to return over to Japan for placement in a college programme.
We’ll focus extra on that scheme in a second however it’s first price explaining whether or not Leitch’s preliminary observations are appropriate.
“Mongolians totally dominated sumo between 2006 and 2016,” says John Gunning, a sumo author and commentator based mostly in Japan. “In that span there have been 59 tournaments and 57 had been gained by Mongolians – plus one every by an Estonian and a Bulgarian.
“Up to now six years there have been some Japanese winners however Mongolians have nonetheless held sway for probably the most half.
“And lots of the guys that came to visit to sumo are bodily imposing. Within the hooked up picture I’m within the center. I weighed 120kg in that picture and I appear to be a baby.”
Gunning between two wrestlers (John Gunning)
You start to know the attraction. In fact, simply since you’re panning for gold, don’t throw away a diamond.
Younger Davaajav just isn’t a prop, however a lock. Leitch jokes that he tried to fatten the fella up, however he simply doesn’t have the genes for it. However Norvoo is hard, don’t you doubt that. A lover of breakdown skirmishes and defensive collisions, he’s uncooked and has an extended technique to go along with his ball work, however the ardour is infectious.
Leitch has additionally talked of diving deeper into Mongolia when his enjoying days are completed. Requested if there’s another aspect to his drive right here, he replies: “I need to replicate after I first came to visit right here as a child as nicely.
“Each alternative was given to me in Japan, by the kindness of my head coach and everybody who supported me all through my youthful years. However not getting somebody from, say, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji or New Zealand, however getting somebody over who has no rugby expertise. He has a chance to vary his life and the course of his future.
“And preserving it within the area is huge. If you happen to’re an Asian child who performs rugby, your first goal is to be knowledgeable participant in Japan. We’ve three leagues. Your quickest route goes by way of Japan. And so I needed to hopefully kick-start that with this Mongolian child. He’s going to school subsequent yr, and hopefully that progresses into knowledgeable contract someplace right here.”
Mongolia face Japan on the Asia Video games, 2010 (Getty Photos)
Leitch talks of not desirous to power Davaajav right into a rugby profession, however moderately give him an array of choices for his life he wouldn’t in any other case get. Massive image, Leitch desires of tapping into expertise all around the area too. He talks of getting a staff in Japan Rugby League One, closely populated with expertise from East Asia, Sri Lanka, India and past.
In his youthful days, Leitch would compete within the Asian 5 Nations (now the Asia Rugby Championship), and though Japan would run up huge numbers towards their rivals, he cherished seeing the fervour from sides like Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Thailand, Dubai.
There’s one thing lacking there now, with these sides by no means getting to fulfill top-tier nations at the moment. He has seen Japan develop the extra main Exams they get, and he desires to pay a few of that again into Asia – even when it means discovering a handful of alternatives for promising children. At the very least at first. There’s discuss of the venture with Davaajav getting used as proof of idea, to assist open the door for extra gamers.
The panorama for rugby in Mongolia
With Mongolia particularly, although, there’s a distinctive cultural heritage there, in addition to some fascinating ethnogeography to cope with.
“Our panorama is huge, however our inhabitants is just 3.4 million,” explains Austin Gansukh, senior vice chairman of the union. In the present day based mostly within the capital area of Ulaanbaatar, Gansukh was first launched to the sport when his brother-in-law James Wooden – a Canada-born Hong Kong worldwide – came over Mongolia proper initially of the 2000s. He introduced an odd-shaped ball with him.
A wrestler and basketball participant, he was drawn in by the contact, however there was a lot extra to the sport and he’s been hooked ever since. He even opted to check in Cardiff, to tear into rugby extra.
Gansukh regularly calls rugby a developmental sport in Mongolia. However earlier than he provides us extra on the trail forward, we must always in all probability have extra on the individuality of the nation.
“There are 21 provinces. And if we cut up them into 4 areas – simply north, east, south and west – you continue to have fairly different types of backgrounds for way of life, even between them. Then even between our areas and provinces, you continue to have a aggressive nature between them.
Conventional Mongolian wrestling (Getty Photos)
“Then there’s geographically. The western a part of Mongolia is sort of excessive, with a whole lot of hills and excessive mountains, numerous bushes and issues like that. Whereas within the south, we now have the Gobi area. It’s a desert. So the approach to life and the density of the populations are very, very completely different.
“Within the north we now have a really huge lake. It’s extra form of sacred land the place mining tasks aren’t allowed, for instance. Then within the east, it’s steppe land. We even have small accent variations throughout. Then within the west we even have a minority inhabitants of Kazakhs. So it’s fairly diversified. And whenever you put all of them collectively, representing a nationwide staff, you’ve got a really diversified staff at the moment.
“Every area produces completely different kinds of wrestlers too, even in our nationwide wrestling competitors. So we now have a whole lot of champions from the far western a part of Mongolia and so forth.”
Speaking about kinds of fighters, Gunning provides us the sumo view, saying: “Most nonetheless develop up in a lot harsher environments than Japanese children. Robust, hardscrabble out of doors dwelling that’s much like the burly younger farmhands and guide employees that dominate in gridiron soccer in Oklahoma and Texas.
“Coming to Japan at a younger age and with the stress of needing to offer financially for household again house in lots of instances means there’s rather more at stake and they also practice tougher and struggle extra desperately than many Japanese children who don’t have the identical risk of disgrace that failure would convey.”
With Norvoo Davaajav, Leitch shares a video of the child’s journey and in addition fills us in on the younger man’s personal modest upbringing. Of a father with arms that inform tales of graft as a cattle herder, a mom who now cleans inns, and a household of round seven who discovered peace in a conventional yurt. The younger man has not seen his household at some point of the Covid disaster.
However there’s the sport. And the contact.
Is battle within the blood? The position of historical past has not even occurred to us, however it’s one thing Gunning touches on when discussing the mentality of Mongolian rikishi (sumo wrestlers). Gansukh provides: “It’s proper to say that we now have a mentality from lots of of years in the past, with Genghis Khan and so forth. He mainly introduced all of the completely different tribes collectively and that made the distinction, as a result of the tribes used to struggle one another on a regular basis.
“We’re a really proud nation about what we’ve achieved traditionally, in order that’s why we stock that sure pleasure about how our ancestors used to dominate. That also carries some weight.”
What helps carry rugby’s weight at the moment within the nation, although, is that it has been adopted by the military, with sevens. There’s highschool and uni rugby however fortuitously, Gansukh explains, the union pitched to the defence ministry and gained them over with the game’s story. There was a rugby championship in 2020 and in September the military will once more placed on a present.
Mongolia are a full member of World Rugby, as of final yr. Their 15s facet have a Take a look at in July, towards Uzbekistan, and in the event that they win that they’ll face the winner of a showdown between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Gansukh says to anticipate a direct, bodily sport up entrance, with the hope that sevens-sharpened backs can capitalise.
As for the longer term, he says the intention is fairly easy: “We need to entice extra international assist.
“Our superb path is to get the likes of Japanese skilled groups to begin Mongolian rugby gamers. As a result of we now have positively acquired some actually, actually good skills, uncooked skills. If we can provide some a chance to play in knowledgeable league, even within the Japanese division three, they may make a very good, profitable profession out of that.
“Proper now really, we’re in talks with a Japanese facet about having a college trade programme the place we really get a few of our highschool groups to journey to Japan, get shared expertise of rugby and so forth. So it’ll be cultural exchanges, in addition to sporting expertise. I feel there are large alternatives and that doesn’t cease with males’s rugby. We’ve an enormous potential with our women as nicely.
Motion from Japan’s Rugby League One (Getty Photos)
“Then from an area perspective, we simply need to promote rugby extra and get extra folks to take part in rugby.”
They’re competing with particular person fight sports activities for consideration. Girls’s 3×3 basketball has been a latest sensation within the run as much as the final Olympics. However Gansukh believes the times of complicated rugby with American Soccer are over.
The final three Rugby World Cups had been proven on Mongolian tv and, Gansukh tells us, the sitting president of the Mongolian Nationwide Olympic Committee was really on the final World Cup closing in Japan.
There’s progress taking place, we’re informed, incrementally.
As for Leitch, proper now he’s loving his interactions with a “codehead” child. As he tells us: “He makes me need to play extra. I used to be excited about retirement and now, simply watching him progress, that’s superior to see.
“Some gamers come over right here, spent eight years and may’t communicate a phrase of Japanese or they’re horrible. He’s been right here two years now and he’s texting me in Japanese. It’s wonderful.”
The way forward for rugby in Mongolia is one thing to wrestle with. However there are combatants decided to create alternatives for gamers.
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