The Regional Association held its end of year Council gathering and Annual General meeting in Hong Kong over the past weekend.
Long standing Executive Committee member and Vice President, Aga Hussain (India) was elected as the Asia Rugby President for the next 2 years with 2 new Vice Presidents, Fawzi Khawaja (Pakistan) and Yuichi Ueno (Japan) supporting him, the 2nd VP slot replacing the post of Honorary Secretary General in the RA’s Constitution.
Asia Rugby made history by being the first of World Rugby’s Regional associations to support World Rugby’s Gender Balance ‘policy by unanimously appointing Asia Rugby Executive Committee member, Ada Milby to be the Regional Association’s first ever female representative to the World Rugby Council.
The weekend also saw Asian union delegates vote to adopt wording to ensure that, by the end of 2018, every member union has a Safeguarding policy for vulnerable persons in Rugby in their jurisdiction.
Council members reviewed progress with the Asia Rugby Strategic Plan as 2018 approaches, being the last full year of Rugby activity before the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
A number of unions provided updates on progress with their IMPACT Beyond RWC 2019 projects to grow the Game across Asia in this unique window of opportunity.
Council agreed a Digital Marketing Strategy to set the future direction and strategic priorities of the organisation-wide digital marketing activities.
Asia Rugby’s 2018 competition formats were agreed and the Council unanimously supported, in principle, the proposed, new Indo Pacific Rugby Championship from early 2019.
Asia Rugby’s annual awards were presented: to Paul Renouf (Hong Kong) for Disinguished service; to Les Millard (Hong Kong) for Match Officiating and to Child Fund Australia for the innovative Pass It Back life skills through Rugby programme, which it runs in partnership with Asia Rugby and World Rugby.
Asia Rugby Digtal
https://www.facebook.com/asia.rugby/
https://twitter.com/asiarugby
