Russian Standards

The Bears are competing in only their second World Cup, but what is support for the game like in the largest country on the planet? And how can Russia’s rugby improve?

- Alan Dymock

ACCORDING TO Sport in the Soviet Union, a 1980 book by Victor and Jennifer Louis, rugby was on the up there in 1958. By 1960, they write, “Leather melon” drew 100 teams from 30 cities to compete in the Soviet championship while finishing schools for both coaches and athletes were springing up.

As the book goes, “In 1962 alone, ten new teams were formed in Georgia, four appeared in Tadjikistan (sic), and four in Uzbekistan.” Between 1978 and 1989, the Soviet Union would beat Italy nine times. They toppled Romania three times between 1985 and 1989. In 1988 they beat the USA, 31-16 in Moscow.

Yet the authors added: “It seemed in the early 1960s rugby was burgeoning throughout the Soviet Union, but today it is clear the game is played, above all, by students and mostly in Moscow.”

That was 1980. Change was inevitable upon the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Though Russia is playing in a second World Cup today – their first outing was in 2011 – they have known struggles in the game since the Nineties began. And more significantly, while Krasnoyarsk in Siberia holds firm as a rugby heartland and former Soviet state Georgia continues to love rugby, the huge Russian metropolis of Moscow had to start over in the modern era.

“I am 48 but I started playing at the age of 11 in Moscow,” says Piotr Khutiev, a lock or No 8 who played for Spartak Moscow in the Soviet era. He is now tied to the Moscow Dragons, a social side where he has served as president.

“During the Soviet time, everyone was ‘amateur’ but really professional – the high-level teams had salaries but they were officially working for some company. There was no social rugby. There was no idea that when you finished school or university you could play just for fun. There was the option to play ‘professionally’ or not at all.