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The Friends of Rugby, a group that promotes the sport, have concluded plans to host a school rugby tournament.

The tournament, to
be known as the Mike Ukome 12-A-Side Schools Rugby Tournament, is
scheduled to hold this Saturday at Saint Saviours School, Ikoyi, Lagos,
from 12 noon through to 6pm. Seven schools will be participating in the
tourney: St. Saviours School, Children International School, Corona
School and Toyibat. Others teams which will participate in the one day
event, which will herald the main 7’s Schools Tournament coming up
early next year, are Dowen College, British International School and
Addax Colt.

“We have decided to
return to the basics, which we started some 12 years ago by hosting a
schools rugby tournament,” said Ntiense Williams, the Secretary of the
group. “You will remember that there was Vitamalt Schools Rugby Program
which heralded Schools Rugby in Nigeria, and then came the Emeka Ukome
Annual Schools Tournament, which ran for almost five years
uninterrupted. According to him, in the last two years, nothing has
been heard about the Emeka Ukome Tourney, so the group decided to
revive it under a new name, Mike Ukome, so as to “give the school
children some rugby to enjoy and start getting involved in the
beautiful game of rugby at a tender age.”

According to the coordinator of the schools program, Emeka Ukome: “I
am very thankful to FOR and in particular Kelechi Mbagwu with his hard
working team for giving back hope to schools rugby, especially the Mike
Ukome Cup,” he said. He then went ahead to explain the format which the
tournament would take. “The event will be a 12-A-Side rugby tournament
for four categories of boys and girls namely, Under-12’s, Under-14’s,
Under-16’s & the Girls events,” he said.