SINGAPORE – Regional club and country tournaments like the Six Nations and Pacific Nations Cup are a popular fixture among rugby fans and Singapore will soon be in on the action again with the launch of an annual four-nation, 15-a-side event featuring its regional counterparts.
The Unions Cup begins on June 28, with Singapore hosting Thailand and Chinese Taipei in a nine-day round-robin series. The plan is for a four-nation event – to be hosted in rotation – in 2025 with the addition of the Philippines.
It will mark the return of such annual regional tournaments for the Singapore side. The Malaysia Rugby Union Cup was a key fixture of the Singapore rugby calendar in the 1970s and 80s, and similar events were also held in the 1990s.
That tournament, which involved Singapore, Malaysia, the New Zealand Force, and Australian Forces North, ended in 1988 with the closing of New Zealand’s military base.
Singapore Rugby Union (SRU) president Sunny Seah said the genesis of the Unions Cup came on the sidelines of the World Rugby conference held during the 2023 Rugby World Cup.
“A few of us got into a discussion at the last World Cup and decided to do something to revamp the 15s tournament format in our region to help raise the standards and popularity of the game, and felt a tournament would help to do that,” said Seah.
A lot of focus and funding in the sport, he added, had gone into the seven-a-side format since it is now an Olympic sport, but 15s is the traditional form and the “format we all love”.
Asian teams of various levels were also finding it expensive to play against one another because many of those of the same standard were located far apart, resulting in unions being drained by travel costs alone.
“We felt that the Asian conference had become unwieldy and costly and so a revamp at a sub-regional level would be beneficial,” Seah said.
Singapore rugby player Gaspar Tan, 35, is looking forward to the tournament as the 15s team have not played in a competitive game since 2019.
He said: “The team are extremely excited to be able to represent the nation again especially in front of our home crowd. It’s also important for us to see how we would fare since the four-year hiatus with our Asian counterparts.”
The first Unions Cup, which is still looking for a title sponsor, will be a low-cost affair of up to $150,000. The teams will pay for their own accommodation and flights, while the SRU will handle other expenses such as transport and food.
Chinese Taipei, Seah added, are keen to drive the Unions Cup because although they belong to the North Asia zone with Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, the Taiwanese feel their neighbours have forged too far ahead in standard and they need to redevelop their game at a more comfortable level.
They are now ranked 65th in the latest World Rugby rankings, well below Japan (No. 12), Hong Kong (No. 24) and South Korea (No. 30).
The other three countries in the Unions Cup are 40th (Philippines), 55th (Singapore) and 78th (Thailand).
Asked why world No. 50 Malaysia are not part of the tournament, Seah said they are keen on the concept but are adopting a wait-and see stance as they have recently been promoted to the premier division of the Asian conference to face United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and South Korea.
The aspiration for the Unions Cup, Seah said, was for it to grow into a six-country tournament to become the equivalent of the Six Nations – which involves England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales – or football’s Asean Championship.
- Additional reporting by Deepanraj Ganesan
