New team announced as rugby's popularity continues to surge -Libya Herald http://goo.gl/fb/yb1E3 #Libya #Feb17
7:18 PM - 9 Feb 13 · Details
New team announced as rugby’s popularity continues to surge
By Wil Crisp.
Tarsana grapple for possession in a scrum with Ahli (Photo: Karim Forjani)
Tripoli, 9 February 2013:
Libyan rugby is continuing to expand at a break-neck pace. A new team is due to start training today, Sunday, the ninth to spring up since the game was legalised in 2009.
The new team, Tripoli Friends (Assadiqa) based in Khadba Al-Khadra, has been formed by Tarek Benrewin, a member of Libya’s rugby committee. Benrewin said he has been inundated by requests to join the new club and 14 people have signed up already, twice the number of men needed to field a team in Libya’s seven-a-side competitions.
Benrewin, whose brother was martyred during the final attack on Qaddafi’s Bab Al-Azizia compound, explained that part of the reason the game is proving to be so popular is its appeal to former revolutionaries. He said around half the Tripoli clubs’ players were in brigades that saw heavy fighting during the uprising, but that it was only recently that the game started to really bloom.
“One year ago I thought about starting a rugby league where the different militias would each field a team, but everyone was still carrying weapons and I was worried they might turn up to games with Kalashnikovs and start shooting if something if they weren’t happy”, he said half-jockingly.
Benrewin announced the formation of his new team at the second round of a countrywide tournament on Friday. Some of those who signed up for his new club were among the crowd. Mohamed El-Kattaf, 23, from Fornaj , said although he had never played rugby before, the game appealed to him because it offered a way to “express your anger in a legal way”. It was the game’s passion and the action that made it so attractive, he added
