Brazil is well-known as the world’s top nation for football but with Rugby 7s staged for the first time ever as part of the Rio Olympics this year, there’s a major push to generate even further global interest in the game with the oval ball.
At the forefront of this push is Southampton student Andrew Turner who has spent the last year on placement as a Development Officer for Premiership Rugby on the Try Rugby Brazil project, which began in São Paulo in 2012.
Like all students of Modern Languages at the University, (except those taking English as their first foreign language), Andrew is spending his third year abroad in a country where one of the languages they are studying is spoken. The 21-year-old, originally from Luton, has been in the State of Rio de Janeiro since June 2015 to help promote the growth of rugby union across the Brazil.
“As an advocate for language study, it is great to see Modern Languages prove, yet again, that it offers fantastic opportunities beyond the stereotypes of interpreting/translation work,” Andrew concluded. “It’s a great feeling to have been a key part of this story, and I’ll carry these experiences with me as new personal and professional chapters in my life begin to unfold.”
Andrew emphasises that Try Rugby, a partnership between Premiership Rugby in the UK, the British Council, Jaguar Land Rover and SESI, the Brazilian Social Services for Industry, is not an outlet for talent scouts but aimed at growing rugby’s popularity to encourage more Brazilians to play and follow the sport, regardless of gender or age.
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