Rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In it ...

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

is a minor sport. They are currently affiliated to

FIRA-AER Rugby Europe is the administrative body for rugby union in Europe. It was formed in 1999 to promote, develop, organise, and administer the game of rugby in Europe under the authority of World Rugby (the sport's global governing body). However, it ...

Governing body

The governing body are affiliated to

History

Soviet Period

Rugby union was played in

the Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...

as early as in 1908. In 1934 the Moscow Championship was started. In October, 1935, it is recorded that the Russian capital

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

played the Belarusian capital

Minsk Minsk ( be, Мінск ; russian: Минск) is the capital and the largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach and the now subterranean Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the admi ...

, and won 6-0.Riordan, p138 The first Soviet Championship took place in 1936, and Minsk team took part in it. There were another in 1938 and 1939,Sorokin, A.A. (А. А. Сорокин) "Rugby" (Регби) in English translation of ''

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; ) is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Bolshaya rossiyskaya e ...

'' (Progress Publishers,

, 1978) but Belarus teams didn't participate. In 1937, there was an unofficial All-Union competition in which two Moscow based teams played ones from Minsk and Gorky. In 1949, rugby union was forbidden in the USSR during the "fight against cosmopolitanism". The competitions were resumed in 1957, and the Soviet Championship in 1966. In 1975 the Soviet national team played their first match.Rugby union in Russia and USSR
Belarus had its own rugby team in the USSR, but it was not treated as a proper national side.

Post-independence

Since the breakup of the USSR, Belarusian rugby has declined greatly. However, there is at least one club active, RC Vepry Minsk. The national team is seeing a resurgence, and played its first game in recent years on 4 October 2014 against Estonia, which resulted in a 58-12 defeat; a promising result against a well-established team. Leonid Zelenkevich, playing in the second row, brought some much needed experience to the team, having spent the last nine years playing for various clubs in England. It is reported that the national team has some fixtures in 2015, in which they hope to cement their reputation as up-and-coming contenders in the Eastern European circuit.

References

* Riordan, James ''Sport in Soviet Society — development of sport and physical education in Russia and the USSR'' (

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pre ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

, England, 1977)

External links