Report by:
Nabil Al Busaidi
22 Jun 2023
The ORC Vision, strategy and goals laid out by Chairman of ORC in front of a great audience physically and online
In the much talked about townhall - an open forum for all fans of rugby in Oman , invited to attend a meeting at the Park Inn Muscat, where the chairman of the Oman Rugby Committee gave a presentation on how we intend to shape the future together. The aim was to showcase and start raising the profile of the ORC in the community whilst also explaining the aspirations for rugby in Oman.
The ambitious goal of trying to qualify for the 2032 Olympics was set as the target, and from that, the strategies and some key milestones were laid out.
More details were provided for the near term, where there would be focus on 3 key pillars - touch rugby, the military and grassroots.
As Oman is classified as a non rugby playing nation by World Rugby, the challenge is to get mass participation in the sport, and the solution is to use touch rugby as a vehicle to introduce the sport countrywide.
To try and turbo boost the introduction of a competitive national team, the focus will be on cooperating with the Sultan's Armed Forces, to start high performance skills training, especially for current handball and basketball players, who already have the transferable skills of hand eye coordination, passing, catching, speed, quickness, agility, teamwork and fitness.
And the final focus for the coming season will be grassroots. The Super Stars program is a proof of concept that will be rolled out over 10 schools initially. Once the kinks have been ironed out, the idea will be to roll the youth skills program to all schools around the Sultanate.
Finally, a brief introduction to the regulatory framework was given, demonstrating how Oman Rugby operates under the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Youth and the Oman Olympic Committee for internal governance, and World Rugby, Asia Rugby and Federation of International Touch for external governance.
The meeting was closed with these final thoughts…Oman Sail managed to go from a start up to world class, internationally competitive organisation in 10 years. So there is no reason Oman Rugby can’t do the same!
We would like to thank all of the attendees, both physically and virtually for their input and questions. We have taken away a number of points and will look to utilise the guidance and information collected from everyone to help us improve and mobilise the sport of rugby across the Sultanate.
