Korean Players in Japan

Several Korean players are playing in the Japanese professional rugby league, Top League.
Young-nam Yu, who made the last try of the opening game of the A5N against Japan by intercepting a pass from the Cherry Blossoms, received a man of the match in Japan for the first time.

In the second picture, the scrum half helping Yu give a speech at an after-match funtion(left) is the first Korean who participated in the RWC but represented Japan. He moved to Japan after graduating from Yangchung High School.

Something for the girl or boy with everything!

ITS 2008 shirts, those famous tournament shirts, are on sale and make the ideal seasonal gift for friends and relatives....they look good and they carry some special meaning for everyone who was there and on top of that, they promote Touch in Korea! Fabulous prices too!! 30,000KRW a pop!
Limited sizes available.
They will be on sale at the two tournaments featured in the posting below....

Final Touch tournaments of 2008

At Jamwon, the new pitch, on Nov 8th the final in the Spire Touch Championships so there we should see the 2008 Champions crowned!! Sign up for this at seoultouch@gmail.com if your team is not already registered.

For the kids, on Nov 9th, there is a tournament down at Taejon, hosted by the Taejon Dragons, I'm sure they could do with all the support they can get as well as a chance to showcase Touch for kids.

Rugby Korea; England Counties to tour Korea

Sounds like the proposed tour of England Counties XV to Korea will take place in June 2009...sponsors are sought for this very exciting prosepct for local rugby development!!

New Touch and rugby pitch in Seoul

For the Hangang Exiles, it may seem ironic that the Seoul Metropolitan Government has chosen a new pitch dedicated to Touch and Rugby (I'll redefine "dedicated" shortly) by the river at Jamwon (between the Hannam and Dongho bridges on the south side) since this is where they originally played and were regularly turfed off by the local (very officious) officials. In fact, the reason it may be possible to play there is probably due to the weekly sacks of sand and soil hauled down from Itaewon to make good the surface and to bury the dangerous debris (in a related move, the Grand Hyatt is now across the road from Starbucks in Itaewon High St). Anyway, all great news and I'm even promised some pics....

However, now we need to examine "dedicated".....which appears to mean "if you can book it" because so far the grand "da-dah, have I got a pitch for you" has been followed up by "oops, sorry, due to high demand..." etc.

Never mind, neither Rome nor Seoul were built in a day and the very fact that the SMG senior officials now have the good intent is highly appreciated!! Many thanks for a great step forward!!

ITS 2008 photos of the big Touch tournament in Seoul

You should now be able to get access to all the photos from then tournament here http://its2008.multiply.com/ (thanks Nancy and Jackie). Downloading the pics only gets small images but full size should be available on a memory stick (which will have to be paid for) by emailing internationaltouchseoul@gmail.com

With probably a thousand pics, you have to be able to find yourself somewhere!

New pitch for Touch and rugby in Seoul?

I think there is!!!

Tens rugby in Korea

The Waegook Cook are expanding their range of sports from Touch to rugby and their teams are wondering if there are any teams playing or keen to play 10's rugby. "We would travel and we can arrange with the farmer to play on our grass fields by the river if people are keen". Farmers field? Sounds like my westcountry home ooo-arrr! "We can't field a rugby team yet but this could be a stepping stone... and 10's is a great game anyway!" says captain Wille Sproule and he hadds "Cheers for a great season everyone- we're looking forward to the touch season next year and maybe some 10's rugby".
Contact Wille on huntersproule@hotmail.com or go looking for Waegook Cook on facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=32850540684&ref=ts