Three Royal Navy Sharks rugby players turned their backs on the grey December weather in the UK; packed their bags and sandals and jetted off to Dubai to play the abbreviated form of the game. Tris Trehan and Ben Jeacock played in the 7s tournament and Manoa Satala in the 10s with all three representing the J9 Foundation set up by former Springbok Joost Van der Westhuizen. Van der Westhuizen played for South Africa in 89 test matches, scoring 38 tries, and was a member of the victorious South African rugby team at the 1995 World Cup. In 2011 he was diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease and he subsequently established the J9 Foundation. Motor Neuron disease attacks the central nervou...
It was at the Royal Navy Rugby Union Annual Members' Meeting held at HMS Temeraire at the beginning of December when RNRU President, Admiral Sir Philip Jones, presented the 'Value the Volunteer' award to Leading Communications and Information Specialist Nathan 'Pony' Moore. Pony, who is currently based at HMS Collingwood, received the award for his outstanding contribution to the RNRU, most recently in his roles as Team Manager for the RNRU 7s team, the Sharks, and the RN East regional team. He thoroughly deserves the President’s Value the Volunteer award, having been at the heart of RN Rugby for over sixteen years, both as a player and a coach, before tak...
So much has happened already this season. Our two community rugby competitions, the Inverdale Challenge and the Navy Cup, have provided the opportunity for plenty of rugby to be played up and down the country. And for the first time ever this year, an Inverdale Challenge match was played overseas, in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. Teams from RN North and RN East made the journey to Holland as part of a weekend of events to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of a match played during the First World War by members of the Royal Naval Division interned there. The contingent from the UK were hosted by Greate Pier Rugby Club and stayed at the local Dutch Air Base. I...
Rugby Tonight airs every Wednesday evening at 8pm from September to May. The studio is located in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. It is a show jam-packed with player profiles, reviews and previews of all the best of the action and headline stories from the Aviva Premiership as well as the European Champions Cup. It is a show that sets out to both entertain and inform. The show is filmed in front of an immersed live studio audience of up to 200 people of which on the 4th January 2017 sixty personnel from the RNRU have been invited to attend; who as well as taking up a third of the audience capacity have been asked to participate in demonstrations of play on th...
HMS OCEAN is nearing the end of her second month of deployment East of Suez, in Command of the Combined Task Force responsible for co-ordinating multi-national maritime assets on behalf of the United States in the Gulf region. A standoff to Bahrain provided the first opportunity for the Ship's rugby team to take to the field and de-stress from duty. It was also the first time many of the players had come together in the same team, so as they took to the field to play under the spotlights no one really knew what to expect. Ocean started well, from the kick off the forwards kept the ball within the pack and after some strong runs, rucking, and slick offloads, found themselves ...
