International Rugby Guests
Bobby Skinstad
Willie Lose
Mike Watkins
South Africa
Tonga
Wales
James Forrester
Neil Cole
Warwick Waugh
England
South Africa
Australia
OURNAMENT DIRECTOR, BOB MERRIGAN reflects on the early years of the Bangkok International Rugby Tens and the interesting changes for this year’s event. Next year will be the tenth anniversary of what has become Asia’s premier social rugby weekend. Eddie Evans and I were both involved with the British Club Rugby Section and at the time which I recall was 2005, Eddie was our captain and I was the rugby section’s secretary, a position for many years referred to as “Scribe”. In 2003, the club had celebrated it’s centenary and the rugby section held a ‘Tens’ tournament which despite the SARS crisis had been a great success. Miraculously, aside from being a great weekend, Bruce Hill’s liver had managed to survive a four day drinking session accompanying the former England prop Jeff Probyn’s visit to Bangkok, Jon Prichard’s knees had held out allowing him to actually play something resembling rugby and one of the first large scale celebrity rugby dinners held in Bangkok had also been a hit! We all agreed that we wanted to find a position in the regional rugby calendar Martin Johnson & Bob Merrigan to repeat the event but this was not possible until 2006 when Eddie and the players presented the idea and wanted to organize The Bangkok International Rugby Tens. Essentially, for the first year there was only Eddie and I organizing the weekend with the only venue available being at Rangsit University and it involved a single pitch and sixteen teams. Thankfully these days there is a much larger organizing committee to share the workload and the tournament has substantially grown since that first year. In 2007, we held the tournament on the three fields at Bangkok Patana School and have been there ever since with the school adding in a fourth field in recent years and as you’ll see over the weekend, they have also recently upgraded the facilities as well. 2007 also saw the incorporation of the DHL Bangkok Lions Junior competition, and since that time the tournament has involved rugby being played simultaneously on all pitches from 8am to 6pm over two days. In recent years the tournament has typically involved around 45 junior teams from Under 8s to Under 18s, 24 senior teams including representation from Thai university teams, most expatriate teams playing in Thailand and many overseas teams. We have also always had around 8 veterans teams and we also showcase the Bangkok Bangers Ancients, which allows the over 50s to play for twenty minutes each year. 16 Oakwood Bangkok International Tens 2014