Cayman Islands:--- The Lawyers Rugby World Cup, held every four years to coincide with the Rugby World Cup is an event which allows various law societies from across the globe to develop professional relationships and profile their national law societies in a social setting, and on the rugby field. This year, the Lawyers Rugby World Cup, hosted by the Law Society of England & Wales, was held at the Richmond Athletic Ground in London.
For the first time the Cayman Islands Law Society (CILS) was invited to participate in the event. Alasdair Robertson, President of the Cayman Islands Law society said, “It is a gratifying honour for the Cayman Islands to be selected to play in this tournament alongside significantly larger jurisdictions such as England and the USA, and reflects in large part the international recognition of the jurisdiction and the role its lawyers play on the global legal stage. I am glad to say that our boys played hard, worked as a team and did us proud.”
The Cayman Islands Rugby committee, comprised of Anthony Akiwume, Paul Murphy, Jacob MacAdam and Paul Parker, set to work recruiting a suitable squad and developing a fund-raising brochure for the event to raise the profile of the Cayman Islands Law Society. “A huge thanks goes out to all our sponsors who took advertising in the brochure, which helped to ensure that the Cayman Islands Law Society team could both participate and have the best possible platform on which to perform”, said Paul Parker, coach and manager of the team.
The Cayman Islands Law Society rugby team included a variety of lawyers from member firms both in the Cayman Islands, as well as Caymanian law students at university in the UK, who spent many hours training for this event.
The tournament was opened with a formal reception held at The Law Society on Chancery Lane on 14th October 2015, providing an opportunity for the players to meet and the group draw to be made. In addition to the Law Society of England and the Cayman Islands Law Society team, there were teams representing the Scottish Law Society, the Irish Law Society, the USA, Australia, Italy and France.
The first match for the Cayman Islands team saw them dominate in the scrums and lineouts and ultimately score an impressive win of 48-3 against the USA. The next match saw the team facing the defending champions, Scotland, in a hard fought game. Unfortunately, the Scots out-played the Cayman Islands to continue their winning streak. The final game against the English proved a close and physical game with the English team defeating the Cayman Islands by seven points.
The end of the week saw a play-off game against the USA team in the Shield Final, resulting in a 33-8 win to Cayman Islands, and a crystal trophy, accepted by Anthony Akiwume, President of the Cayman Islands Law Society rugby team. The overall tournament was won by the Irish lawyers, who fought hard against the English in the final.
The presence of the Cayman Islands rugby team was well received and comments from other teams were favourable, with the Scottish team saying, “The Cayman Islands team was the best pack in the tournament with a hugely effective scrum”. The President of the English Law Society was particularly full of praise for the Cayman Islands Law Society team as he thanks the team for the , “... magnificent contribution to the Lawyers Rugby World Cup, both on and off the field.”
“The Cayman team worked tirelessly together on the field showing professionalism, strategic team-work and patriotism. The event was well organised with a good measure of fun thrown in. It was great for our boys to interact with the other law societies, and we have already had interest from the Law Societies of England, the USA and Italy in visiting the Cayman Islands” Paul Parker said. “Congratulations to the CILS Rugby team for their valiant effort.”
The Cayman Islands Law Society would like to host the next tournament in 2019 and will be reaching out to other national teams to gauge interest.
