The Federazione Italiana rugby Football League (FIRFL) is growing visibly and has now officially announced another bead to their international stature: the Federleague, in fact, has signed an agreement with the “Kenya Rugby League Federation” for the creation of an “Rugby Academy”, which will be launched in the Watamu area, the location where the Italian National Rugby League team recently completed in an international rugby league match against their Kenyan selection.
The idea was launched during the Italians’ Kenyan tour and this immediately took foot and within a few weeks was formalised. Two weeks ago, the Kenyan Federation President met the Secretary General of the Federleague, Pierluigi Gentile, and the parties have now defined a project of understanding, which will most likely start within a year: in particular showing the willingness of the African Federation to officially open the Academy and organise another international rugby league match event against the Italian national team, in a similar format to their previous encounter in March.
The Kenyan Rugby League Federation will provide an area where the Academy sports centre will be based and, along with this, there will be a gym and offices that will act as their the headquarters. This enables them to create a “highly specialised” area open to athletes of all ages, managed by the African experts during the year, but enriched by the season presence of several Italian technicians. The parties would like to point out that the Academy will certainly like the major focus to be rugby league, but it will be open to other codes of rugby.
In short, there is the idea of developing rugby activity as Kenyans are logically very sporting and attentive to all codes of the oval ball. The Federleague, with this new project, emphasised once more that there is complementarity between the various codes of rugby, highlighting how the discipline of XIII is not absolutely contrary to the other.
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