Home soil for Lady Volcanoes in Asia Rugby Women’s Championships

The Lady Volcanoes will have home crowd advantage for the 2019 Asia Rugby Division 1 Women’s Championships on June 19 and 22 in Calamba next week.

Originally scheduled to be played outside the country, Philippine Rugby recently agreed to host the championships to ensure the competition had sufficient support.

“We hosted the Asia Rugby Men’s Championships last year, when the request came to look to host the Women’s Championships, we decided we wanted to be able to give the same opportunities for our women’s to play on home soil” shared Jake Letts, General Manager for Philippine Rugby.

The Lady Volcanoes finished second last year in Division 1, this year the Philippines will be aiming to go one better, and do so in front of a home ground. 

“We play India in our first game, hopefully we can get a win and progress to the final. Last year we were successful over India, we are looking to achieve the same result next Wednesday” shared Acee San Juan, halfback for Team Philippines.

The Volcanoes will be seeded second behind Singapore and ahead of both India and China. The competition between all nations looks to be fairly contested. “Women’s Rugby in Asia is consistently growing and attracting more women and girls to play. It’s an exciting era for our sport. It’s also positive to see each nation evenly contested in this competition. It’s going to be close between all matches and exciting to watch” shared Letts.

The Volcanoes will boast experienced players Rassiel Sales, Sylvia Tudoc and Aiumi Ono. The National Women’s program has consistently been preparing under Head Coach Andy Brown and Performance Coach Chris Everingham over the last two months and has been sufficiently supported by the MVP Sports Foundation, First Pacific and Philippine Sports Commission.  
​
The first match will be on Wednesday afternoon at 3:30pm against India at Southern Plains Sports Field. The winner will play either Singapore or China on Saturday the 22nd June.
​
All photos courtesy of Asia Rugby and Singapore Rugby