Rug­by's ea­ger­ness to re­sume the sport this year will take it to Sep­tem­ber when the new school term is sched­uled to open, Col­in Pe­ters, pres­i­dent of the T&T Rug­by Foot­ball Union (TTR­FU) said yes­ter­day.

"If this does not hap­pen, then we will en­gage in tag rug­by," Pe­ters told Guardian Me­dia Sports, fol­low­ing a zoom meet­ing on Fri­day with Rug­by Amer­i­c­as North (RAN) rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jen­nifer Gray, not­ing, all the clubs and play­ers want to do right now is play rug­by.

Pe­ters said his ex­ec­u­tive has been con­tem­plat­ing tag rug­by, a type of rug­by which is played with a belt tied around the waist with vel­cro at­tached to it to pre­vent con­tact with any­one. This type of rug­by has been used around the world for de­vel­op­ment rug­by by young play­ers. How­ev­er, Pe­ters said if they have to re­vert to this type of rug­by for their se­nior play­ers, they will, not­ing that once the gov­ern­ment gives the okay for schools to re­open, then it will be al­right for rug­by to start play­ing again.

The sport, like every­thing else, has been on lock­down due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic which has killed many across the world, and Pe­ters and his ex­ec­u­tives have been fol­low­ing the safe­ty guide­lines by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO), the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) and the T&T gov­ern­ment team of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram.

The TTR­FU sanc­tions six sev­en-a-side tour­na­ments by clubs for the year, name­ly the Po­lice, Rain­bows, Har­vard Sports and Cul­tur­al Club, Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC), Caribs and the Roy­alians Sev­en-a-Side tour­na­ments, which will be de­ter­mined by the TTR­FU ex­ec­u­tives.

Be­ing a con­tact sport, Pe­ters said they have been hard­est hit by the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion. The rug­by foot­ball union ex­ec­u­tive meets every Thurs­day morn­ing via zoom to dis­cuss the way for­ward for the sport.

He said, "We ap­pre­ci­ate the re­sponse from our teams and play­ers. There's very lit­tle that we can do at this time but we have been ask­ing our play­ers to work hard and stay fit."

Mean­while, Pe­ters added that his ex­ec­u­tives are well on course to de­liv­er to World Rug­by, their plans for the sport of up to 2022. At a Strate­gic Plan­ning Meet­ing with RAN last week, the TTR­FU was asked to de­liv­er the doc­u­ment by No­vem­ber, this year. Pe­ters said they are well on course with the doc­u­ment since they start­ed the meet­ing since last year.