Chronicle Editor
This year’s edition of the Dairibord Schools Rugby Festival will be focused on improving the quality of play rather than quantity and the event will take place at its traditional venue, Prince Edward School in Harare next month.
Every year teams from the Sadc region take part in the event and two Namibian teams have already shown interest while the event organisers hope to include a South African side. Dairibord has over the years sponsored nine sporting events and through their sister company, Lyons have sponsored five sporting events but has now taken over from Cotton Company of Zimbabwe (Cottco) as the new title sponsor of Zimbabwe’s largest schools rugby festival, which has been known as the Cottco Rugby Festival for the last 15 years and will this year run from May 6-10.
The festival will be run under the theme “Growth – from community development to a culture of sporting excellence”. One festival official said that this year’s event will not be concerned about the numbers but improving the play instead.
“There will be 90 extra guards from a security company beefing up our security this year to ensure that the festival runs smoothly and mistakes that were reported last year will not happen again.”
Interestingly , this edition will be reduced from the previous 184 schools, who took part last year to 150 schools.
The tournament is one of the largest schools rugby festivals in the world. Thirty four schools were booted out because of non-compliance to their terms of agreement such as fulfilling of fixtures, age cheating and not playing rugby after the festival. – CL Reporter.
Online Reporter