Iceland discovers “ruoningur”

The challenges faced by rugby players in Iceland are many. Apart from the obvious climatic problems, the total population of the country is somewhat less than that of Cardiff. In addition the game - technically rin Icelandic - did not exist on the island?˜before 2009, with the first men's 15s game not taking place until 2011 (the lack of opposition being a barrier). Those that have heard of the sport often confuse it with American Football. While Iceland are now members of Rugby Europe, they have yet to become members of World Rugby.

In the spirit of one of the most world's most?˜equal societies, women have been welcomed as a part of the development of the game in?˜the island from the very first days.?˜Sigurbj??rg J??nsd??ttir was first introduced to the sport when as an exchange student in New Zealand 2005-2006 where she trained with her college team in Matamata and started going on practises with the men in Iceland in 2010.

"The men here in Iceland are very open to women ?˜she tells us."While we are still trying to build a core of women we often train with the men, but also try to train separately if we have the numbers to do so."

"The main challenges that we have is that rugby is not a well known sport and public perception is that the sport is very violent. A promotion of the sport was started here in Iceland few years ago, mainly by going into the schools and introduce it to kids. Rugby gets almost no media coverage so it has been challenging to promote it and try to get to bigger audience, get new players and change the public's perception of this sport."

"Our ambition is to have scheduled womens practices and involving a core of players. We are struggling to start playing full contact because we have not been able to have the same group of woman training long enough to learn the technique.