Downhearted, but not down and out!

It was meant to be the year we took two women’s teams from the UK to play Rugby in Zambia. In March 2019 Wendy Silver of Castle Cary had initiated a meeting at Mufulira Rugby Club. It turned out that Mopani had invested money into the old facility and it was now flourishing, and source of pride to the town. Now renamed the Mufulira Leopards (men) and Leopardesses (women’s team), with the ground called ‘the Leopard’s Cage’, the charismatic boss Barry Hodgkinson asked us to see what we could do to bring some international competition to Mufulira.

Back in UK we contacted a number of teams and raised the £25,000 sponsorship needed. Yeovil Women and Thamesian Ladies were the winners of the places and all was set for them to take part this summer on August 1st/2nd weekend for a wonderful tournament with as many as 12 teams scheduled to take part.

Well, sadly, we all know what happened and the disappointment has been huge. But we battle on and all of us fervently hope that at some point in the future, relations between the teams in UK and Mufulira will bloom. All of us came to know members of both teams in UK, many of whom work in the NHS, and came to know some in Zambia too. We salute them all and hope that the spirit of sporting competition will revive activities on both sides in the not too distant future.