Brazil women’s rugby players sowing seeds of growth for 2016 Olympics

The Summer Games hosts want to make use of every opportunity to raise the profile of the sport.

Brazil’s Mariana Ramalho powers her way through to score a try in the Women’s Sevens World Series match against France. Jake Badger for The National

DUBAI // From the Copacabana to the Dubai desert, the Brazil women’s team hope to lay concrete foundations ahead of the 2016 Olympics.

Much like the year-old IRB Women’s Sevens World Series, the South Americans are using rugby’s return to the Summer Games to develop the sport.

Appearing as hosts in three years’ time has galvanised the game in Brazil, with rugby becoming the fasting-growing sport there. Around 13,000 people have swapped the round ball for its oval rival, although the number of women participating ranks at an estimated 500. However, rugby is slowly surfacing from the shadow of the “joga bonito”.

“From when I took the job in March until now, more and more people in the street who see the rugby jersey come up and say ‘oh rugby, crazy sport’,” explained Christopher Neill, the Brazil coach. “They still don’t understand it and may not have played, but they’re starting to hear about it more. There’s a lot more getting involved.”

That Neill is associated highlights the push for growth. The New Zealander’s pedigree is reinforced by his time spent coaching Canterbury sevens, and he now splits his work between the Brazil men’s and women’s teams.

The latter occupy 70 per cent of his focus, and have steadily improved, with an eighth-placed finish earlier this year in the China leg of the 2012/13 series.

They then featured in June’s World Cup, before yesterday emerging triumphant in Dubai from one of their three Pool C matches. Although Neill was disappointed with his side’s opening two displays - one defeat and one draw - overall he is content with the progress.

After all, the sport in Brazil is still semi-professional, the team trains on an artificial football pitch, have to sometimes travel three hours to the nearest gym, and compete in only six or seven tournaments there per year.

They clearly benefit from receiving invites to each of the series’ five legs. “We’re very, very lucky the IRB allow us to come to every tournament because they realise we need growth; that us being competitive in 2016 would be good for the game,” he said.

“So we’re looking for results to gain confidence, but at the same time we’ve to build depth within Brazil as well. Every one of my team uses Rio as their ultimate objective.”

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