" To World Rugby,
Sir Bill Beaumont,
All Executive Members,
and to whom it may concern,
Hello!
I hope you're fine, because unfortunately we are not!
I'm Manuel Pinto, a huge fan of rugby.
I'm writing this letter on behalf of all small clubs in Portugal and by small I mean almost every club.
In the past few years, our Federation (Federação Portuguesa de Rugby - FPR) gradually stopped helping most of the teams with fundamental support, which I will mention some of them bellow:
- Basic transports for players to play outside their cities.
- The funding (monetary protection) for clubs that invest on training new players, to increase the number of young players in order to follow their evolution within the team.
- The supplies of rugby materials (of every kind, even rugby balls).
There is an obvious detachment for the newest clubs in Portugal. Unfortunately they have never really helped the new clubs that appeared after 2007 (most of them have already disappeared). Not to mention that they have decided to reduce the national championship to 8 clubs, without any consultation or opinion.
The biggest and oldest clubs are concentrated in the capital and therefore all the other teams, scattered throughout the country, are intentionally dropped into oblivion.
The main clubs don't need to be provided with transports because they almost never play outside their city. It has to be the small teams, I repeat again: without funding, that have to move in order to play.
The lack of funding results in one evident consequence: if the small teams no longer have money, there's no way to train and keep players, therefore the players choose to be in the biggest teams which will always win the championships and in the end the small teams will disappear.
Coincidentally most of the FPR members, national coaches and national players are from Lisbon. I'm sure one day they all want to play only against each other.
We - all the other clubs from Portugal - are dying.
We will try to resist until the last breathe but one day we will disappear.
We tried every means and you are our last resource, so we need your help because only you can help us!
And we just want to play rugby!
Respectfully,
Manuel Pinto "
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