The World Cup is a month away, but in addition to Warm-ups, there are two other competitions to keep an eye on.
2019 Victoria Cup
The Africa Gold Cup was cancelled earlier this year due to sponsorship loss. However there is still some African rugby taking place this Summer. Named after Lake Victoria and Victoria Falls, the Victoria Cup began at the end of last June, and will continue this weekend. The competition was previously played in 2010 and 2011 as a trinations tournament with Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Uganda, but was discontinued with Uganda and Zimbabwe withdrawing due to financial difficulties.
Kenya went in as favourites (incidentally, the Kenya womens team reached their highest ever World Ranking of 25th despite losing 39 – 0 to South Africa in the Rugby Africa Womens Cup). Uganda and Zimbabwe would be expected to challenge while Zambia
Results
Saturday June 22nd
Kenya 13 – 16 Uganda
Saturday July 13th
Uganda 5 – 16 Kenya
Zimbabwe 39 – 10 Zambia
Saturday July 27th
Uganda 26 – 31 Zimbabwe
Zambia 23 – 45 Kenya
Saturday August 3rd
Zimbabwe 30 – 29 Kenya
Saturday August 17th
Uganda 38 – 22 Zambia
Fixtures
Saturday August 24th
Zimbabwe v Uganda
Kenya v Zambia
Saturday August 31st
Zambia v Uganda
Saturday September 14th
Zambia v Zimbabwe
Saturday September 21st
Kenya v Zimbabwe
Oceania Rugby Cup
There’s a newly formed competition this year in Oceania. The Oceania Rugby Cup is a new Round-Robin tournament set to be a yearly competition. There are talks that Cook Islands, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu could take part next year. Looking to further that it would be great if Tahiti could join too, they played in the Oceania play-off against Cook Islands to decide who would play Hong Kong for a place in the Repechage.
This new tournament is a great way to get tier 3 countries playing regular rugby. As I said on this week's Harpin On Rugby podcast, smaller nations need to play more games. The one draw back to this tournament is that it’s so short, and there are 3 games for each team in 8 days. I wrote an article about how the World Cup shouldn’t feature such short turnarounds. The same is the case here. Hopefully next year the tournament can start earlier on in the Summer.
Fixtures
Friday August 23rd
Solomon Islands v Niue Island
Papua New Guinea v Nauru
Tuesday August 27th
Solomon Islands v Nauru
Papua New Guinea v Niue Island
Saturday August 31st
Niue Island v Nauru
Papua New Guinea v Solomon Islands
Ciarán is the Producer and Presenter of Post to Post Sport (@PostToPostSport), a sports podcast that covers rugby, football, wrestling, and Irish Sport News. You can get their podcasts on MixCloud our Spotify (Search PostToPostSport) and PlayerFM (Post to Post Sport).
