Wednesday's Ruck & Maul

From Gradyn Bowd currently playing rugby in Spain; "Hola y Felice Navidad"

“Hope all are well in Victoria and at CW.  I am currently living and playing in Eibar, Spain which is in the heart of Basque Country.  It’s an interesting situation here with the locals speaking both Spanish and Basque, making for an interesting learning curve!  Eibar is a little town known for its manufacturing of firearms.

The team I am with is more semi pro than fully professional.  The rugby competition has three leagues in the Division Honours B.  Each league has twelve teams playing for promotion into the top league. The level of competition is comparable to the BC premiership league.  We play eleven teams and then it’s split - ‘top six’ and ‘bottom six’ and you play everyone in your group again.  Then if you win, the ‘top side’ of this you have a chance at promotion and if you lose the ‘bottom side’ you play to get relegated.

Due to Covid, a lot of teams are struggling financially and can only support a semi-professional set up creating a large gap between the top and bottom teams.  We are tested for Covid every Wednesday before games, tight restrictions have stopped people from traveling unless it is for work related reasons.  Eibar currently has four contracted players including myself  that are training full time while many of the other players work or study at the local university.”

(Ed.  Eibar is in the north of Spain, not far from Bilbao on the coast and close to the France “border”.  Basque may just be one of the world’s strangest linguistic concoctions!  Grady will be a man of the world if he masters this – can you imagine the fiery Spanish captain and coach slipping back and forth with language at the half-time pep talk?)

Thanks, Grady we look forward to future reports and we say to you; “kaixo eta gabon zorionak!”