Georgia

At the crossroads between Europe and Asia, where history’s most powerful empires fought their wars and the world’s first grapevines were cultivated, Georgia are challenging rugby’s world order, powered by 130kg props and the spirit of a three-century-old game of their own.

Nikozi, one of Georgia’s oldest villages about an hour north of the capital, Tbilisi, sits directly on the border with South Ossetia, one of two Russian-occupied regions within Georgia’s sovereign land. The other, Abkhazia, is situated to the northwest. As is often the case, the history of these regions is complex. Since Georgia declared itself independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, tensions have fluctuated here between the state and Russian-backed separatists, with war breaking out between 1992-93. Peacekeeping forces had managed to stabilise the region, but then Vladimir Putin came to power. With Georgia’s politics turning ever more towards the West, the prospect of NATO membership caused uproar in the Kremlin and ultimately prompted an invasion by Russian troops in the brutal five-day Russo-Georgian War of 2008. Under the banner of ‘peace enforcement’ over four hundred Georgians were killed, 228 of whom were civilians, and since then both Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been occupied by the Russian military. 

This is not somewhere that rugby would naturally thrive, but here in Georgia they recognise the sport’s power as a force for good. “Nikozi is actually cut in half by the barbed wire,” explains Nono Andguladze, a former Georgia national team player and the Georgia Rugby Union social project manager now bringing the sport to the region. “They call it a crawling border. So Russian troops, the border police, if they decide they want to move the border they literally take the stakes and move it forward. It happens slowly, slowly, and then some people wake up the next day and their yard is cut in half.”

The border has been the site of countless tragedies over the years; in late 2023 for example, a Georgian man was shot dead there by Russian troops when he went to pray in his nearby church, one that soldiers had barred Georgians from entering earlier that year. Georgians are also routinely ransomed for crossing the ever-fluctuating line. “They have special trained dogs,” continues Nono, “so if you walk near the border, the dogs are going to chase you over to the occupied region, and then they will ransom you for 1000 lari [GEL], which is around £300.” Nono says there is little the government of Georgia can do to stop what is happening. “What are they going to do, start a war?”

This is where he and the Georgian Rugby Union are stepping in. “There are five hundred kids in and around Nikosi, and there is very little access for sports facilities or any kind of sports activities,” explains Nono. “There is a British Police team who are fundraising, and with their funding we are going to sponsor two coaches to be there to start a rugby team. They have a field which needs to be flattened, and we’ll need to put a fence around to keep the cows off. But then we will have a team, and we will help them travel to kids festivals and bring some festivals there.”

The presence of rugby in one of the most vulnerable and unstable areas of the county is testament to how it has grown into the de facto national sport, despite its comparative infancy. The rise of Georgian rugby has been remarkable. Their first international game was as recent as 1989 [a 16-3 victory over Zimbabwe], but today they are one of only a handful of genuine challengers to rugby’s elite. They’ve beaten the likes of Wales, Italy and Fiji and dominate the Rugby Europe Championship, winning the last six consecutive titles.

“We want to take rugby to those that cannot come to us: if that’s people in prison, children with disabilities, we want to give back the love the public give to us,” he continues. “We want those kids in Nikozi to have something. They don’t have anything there, so we want to involve them in rugby and teach them the values. We don’t want them to become good rugby players, just to become good people. We want them to become part of our family.”

With the subtropical Black Sea coast to the west, the 5000m Caucasus mountains to the north and a trio of UNESCO World Heritage sites, not to mention a dominant international rugby side, Georgia packs plenty into the land it calls home. Holding a population just shy of four million, a third of which live in Tbilisi, it’s a nation that maintains a rich and distinct culture despite its many invaders over the centuries, each looking to control Georgia’s strategic location on the transcontinental bridge. The Mongols, Persians, Ottomans and Russians all left their mark, and yet the Georgian people remain intensely welcoming. The night that Rugby Journal arrives in Tbilisi we’re received with a dinner table overflowing with dishes from Khinkali (a Georgian dumpling) to Khachapuri (cheese-filled bread) and quickly learn that the tamada, the Georgian toastmaster, is a sacred tradition, blessing the table with every drink of Georgia’s famous amber wine, made in traditional qvevri vessels for the past eight thousand years.

The golden age of Georgia saw the growth of a powerful kingdom in the Middle Ages, becoming a pre-eminent force of the Christian world and where Christ’s robe is said to have been buried – the holy site in the old capital of Mtskheta, twenty kilometres north of Tbilisi, was once a pilgrimage as hallowed as Jerusalem itself. 

However, much of its recent history has been under the cloud of Russian rule. First annexed in the late nineteenth century, Georgia briefly emerged as an independent state after the 1917 Russian Revolution, only to once again be invaded by the Red Army in 1921, under the command of Georgian-born Joseph Stalin. Understandably, the anti-Russian sentiment is strong here – it’s hard to miss in the street art that covers Tbilisi, or in the server at our lunch spot who tells a Russian-speaking customer, ‘You can speak Georgian, English or you can leave.’

Given this history, the Georgia of today is undeniably impressive. The first decade of post-Soviet independence brought economic crisis, political instability and war, but peaceful revolutions in November 2003 instigated a series of democratic reforms that facilitated a truly remarkable economic and social recovery. And it was in those years, as the nation found its feet, that Georgian rugby truly began to flourish.

After a number of false dawns, the first green shoots of rugby’s potential were seen in 1959 when a training session was organised at the Tbilisi Hippodrome by a university team. Clubs quickly began to spring up, the Georgia Rugby Union was founded in 1961, and by 1978 a club called Lokomotivi, based in Tbilisi, lifted the Soviet Cup. Eleven years later, with the Soviet era almost at an end, Georgia arrived on the international scene with that Zimbabwe win.

Georgia had taken to rugby with ease, but they already had it in their blood in the form of Lelo Burti, an ancient full-contact game where two villages fight for a leather ball, traditionally packed with sand and doused in wine. While still played in its traditional form today, the game had become standardised on a proper pitch with fifteen-a-side teams, making the transition to rugby straightforward. 

War and instability stifled progress in the 1990s, the national team surviving on a handful of practice balls and old Soviet tractors turned into scrum machines, and yet even then Georgia came within just a few points of qualifying for the 1999 World Cup, agonisingly losing on aggregate to Tonga in a two-leg playoff. Thanks to a Frenchman called Claude Saurel, who joined the union in 1995 as advisor and then head coach, Georgian players had been given the opportunity to leave the county and compete in the French leagues, accelerating their development. “This was a period when there was nothing for rugby, no opportunity, no pitch, no balls, it was a really difficult setting,” says Tornike Gogebashvili, CEO of the Georgia Rugby Union as we speak in his Tbilisi office. “These guys were real heroes for Georgian rugby, because that generation made a lot of the first steps to grow rugby from nothing. Going to France was a big opportunity for us.” 

So rapidly did Saurel’s plan come to fruition that, in 2001, Georgia were crowned European champions for the first time and, in 2003, they qualified for the World Cup. With England, South Africa, Samoa and Uruguay in their group they didn’t manage to secure a win, but the physical prowess they showed against the Springboks proved they were here to stay.

From their first moment gracing the world stage, it was clear that Georgia had something that separated them from other fledging rugby nations, and that something rested in the fundamental character of the Georgian people.

“Across the centuries, because of our location we’ve had a lot of attacks from different empires and neighbours who wanted to control our territory,” explains Tornike, “but we managed to save our identity – we developed a culture, we saved our language and alphabet, and we had to fight for it and be very strong as a small nation. 

“Because of this, the game of rugby, which is all about fighting for each other, is very close to our soul. It was easy for us to understand the mentality of this sport, and without it, it would have been impossible for us to get the results we have.” 

The 2007 World Cup was the defining moment for rugby in Georgia. Not only did they record their first World Cup win, 30-0 against Namibia, but they almost dealt Ireland the greatest of World Cup upsets, narrowly losing 14-10 against the Six Nations runners-up. This was a time when Georgia’s rugby infrastructure was still unimaginably underdeveloped, with no full-time training base for the national team and no more than eight pitches in the whole country, half of which were shared with football. 

Today, seventeen years on, the landscape of rugby in Georgia is unrecognisable. “In 2022, we had our historical win against Italy [Georgia’s first against a Tier One nation], and after this we had our game against Cardiff in Wales [winning 13-12],” Tornike continues. “Besides this, in 2021 we created the first Georgian franchise, Black Lion, it was historical and a dream of all Georgian players and supporters, with sixty per cent of the players from the national team. 

“This year, we already have confirmed games against two Tier One countries, Australia and Japan, and we will confirm more. We also have great news, with Georgia joining the Six Nations under-18s for the first time – they have also asked us about an under-18s women’s team. At the moment we only have a [women’s] sevens team after Covid, but for September we have to make a women’s team that will participate in next year’s Under-18s Six Nations.”

More quickly than any other nation, Georgia has established itself as a major player in the rugby ecosystem. Landmark results over the last decade are markers of their measured progress: a 16-15 win against Samoa in 2013, then ranked eighth in the world; a 17-10 win over Tonga at the 2015 World Cup; victory away in Fiji by 14-3 in 2016; then 2022, the year they broke their Tier One duck. While the 2023 World Cup ended in disappointment, coming home with only a draw against Portugal, 2024 brings fresh promise with more Tier One fixtures in the calendar.

But how did Georgia achieve this remarkable development in such a short space of time? Well, by getting Georgia’s richest man on board, of course. Inspired by their performances at the 2007 World Cup, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili – who later founded Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, and was elected Prime Minister – started the Cartu Foundation. This charitable organisation has since put the equivalent of £80 million into Georgia rugby, principally through building fourteen high-performance centres across the country, this infrastructure forming the foundations of Georgia’s development over the past two decades. “Still today, the Cartu Foundation is with Georgia rugby, supporting us every time,” says Tornike. “I’m sure that, as a result of this, we started winning, and winning against Tier One countries.”

With the foundation’s funding targeted at infrastructure rather than the operational costs, the Georgia union has still had familiar battles with financial stability – emerging from Covid, the union was in the midst of a financial crisis, just shy of £2m in debt and with a budget of only £4.25 million. Adding to this crisis, the union’s presidential elections in 2020/21 turned ugly as Irakli Abuseridze, elected in December 2020, had his appointment rejected by the Georgian government citing ‘procedural violations’. In March 2021, current president Soso Tkemaladze, reportedly a close associate of éminence grise Bidzina Ivanishvili, was elected instead as the only candidate, with violent protests between each candidate’s supporters breaking out over claims of political meddling. In the midst of these elections, it was Tornike who took over as interim president before later taking his post as CEO, overseeing the recovery from their financial difficulties. 

“It was a terrible period because of the crisis, but we overcame the problems,” he says. “In 2021, when Soso was elected, everything changed here. We started negotiations with the government to let them see the whole picture and what the potential is from Georgia rugby. From this, government started increasing the budget, and it’s increased already four times since 2020.” Today, the union’s budget sits at around £20 million, £16.5 million of which comes from the government. 

With infrastructure in place across the country, development at the international level has been supplemented by significant improvements domestically. “In our top domestic championship, Didi 10, most of them are professional clubs. Then we have our first division, which at the moment we are helping with the marketing side and to create structures. In 2020 when we came in, the Didi 10 clubs’ budget was only GEL 300,000 (about £90,000), and now their budget is GEL 900,000, so three times bigger. The first division budget was only GEL 60,000 (£18,000), now it’s GEL 300,000. At the moment we have nearly ten thousand registered players, and we hope after two or three years these will increase much. For 2030, we want to make thirty thousand licensed players. 

“We also have our project ‘Get into Rugby’, which we re-started in 2021 with the help of the Georgian Government in 150 schools, and we are ready to add one hundred more for next year. The final aim is that in all two thousand public schools in Georgia, there must be rugby.”

Georgia’s small playing pool is only set to grow, but even now they are punching globally, particularly at the age grade level: while the national team has recorded two wins against Tier One opposition, the under-20s have nine to their name. Last season was particularly successful for the Junior Lelos, beating England for the first time by 40-38 in June, before agonisingly missing out on a historic Under-20s World Championship semi-final, being denied a place in the final four on points difference after beating Argentina and Italy. 

Success is down to the youth infrastructure that has been built in Georgia, and no club is a better example than Lelo Saracens, tucked among the tower blocks of north Tbilisi. Founded in 1980, Lelo is the second most decorated club in Georgia having won the domestic title six times, including four in a row between 2013-2016, but it is also the greatest hotbed of rugby talent in Georgia. No club has provided more players to the national team, and Georgia youth squads are almost always based around a strong Lelo contingent – in the under-20s squad that went to the 2023 World Championships, eight players came from there. 

“Years ago, the conditions for young players were very bad because there was no infrastructure, just a couple of empty fields,” says Giorgio, one of the coaches here at Lelo. “At that time the number of kids was very low, but now we have two bases in Tbilisi and across every age we have around one thousand kids, from six to eighteen [around eighty per age group]”. 

The picture for youth development has changed dramatically in Georgia in the past twenty years. Back in 2002, perhaps Georgia’s greatest ever player Mamuka Gorgodze started playing rugby at this club when he was seventeen years old, making his debut for the national team just one year later. Today, we are speaking to Giorgio as thirty children aged six to eight are turning up to train on a Monday night. “Before, with Gorgodze’s generation, usually most of them came from different sports [Gorgodze switched to rugby from basketball],” he continues. “Now, kids are starting [rugby] from six or seven. If somebody joins them late, now we can see the difference in development – we couldn’t do that before. Now, starting late is the exception, because we have the infrastructure in place.”

With the Georgia Under-18s now playing in the Six Nations, these youngsters have the chance to compete at the highest level. “It is a great opportunity, in previous generations, we wouldn’t even have had this chance. If you look at results today when we play against Portugal, Netherlands or those countries at age group level it’s 40, 50-point differences, so this opportunity is hugely beneficial.” 

It’s from this strong youth set-up that Georgia hopes to push forwards with its greater ambitions for the senior national team. The under-18s joining the Six Nations is a crucial first step for Georgia, one that World Rugby has supported the union in achieving. “In 2021, Sir Bill Beaumont, Alan Gilpin, everybody came to Georgia,” reveals Tornike, picking up the story. “We have really big support from their side, and they started to help us in negotiation with the Six Nations. Last year they agreed that under-18s would join and now we are talking under-20s. We had a really good team last year in the World Championships, so I hope maybe next year, maybe two years after, they will join the Six Nations. 

“Of course, when we agree this, the final step will be for national team [to join]. This is the dream for every Georgian. Nobody was expecting two or three years ago that Georgia will join the Six Nations at under-18s, under-20, but now we are talking, we are ready, and we need to open doors for this, because we deserve it.”

Continuing to challenge the top teams in the world will only further emphasise the need to include Georgia at the top table. That requires continued games against Tier One, a prospect that some argue is threatened by the World League, the new bi-annual tournament replacing November and summer Tests in 2026. However, part of this agreement was an assurance from World Rugby of more cross-over games between tiers, and so Georgia are in support of this project. “For this year and next year, World Rugby guaranteed us good Tier One games, and then there is only two years where we are not playing against Tier One, in 2026 and 2028,” he says. “In 2027 there is the World Cup, and before we will have three good games, and in 2029 it’s British Lions, so we will have Tier One games [while the Lions are on tour]. We will have really good games in the second division of this new tournament also, but of course, it would be much better if we were in the first division [promotion and relegation is to be introduced by 2030]. So, it is not catastrophic, but also there was no alternative.”

The rugby side is one thing, but when it comes to the Six Nations, the real sticking point is commercial. Each of the member unions and federations has a financial stake in the competition and won’t want that to be diluted. Georgia’s commercial offering will need to be as strong as their rugby. “We have to do much more, there is no point where we’re happy with what we’ve done,” admits Tornike. “We need supporters for every game to come to stadiums. At this World Cup there were nearly six thousand Georgian supporters. We saw the game against Clermont when more than seventeen thousand supporters came to support Black Lion [in the Challenge Cup], it is our best result for supporters. We also saw the game away against Castres, when a thousand supporters came, and everyone was surprised.

“We are getting ready. The commercial and marketing side is much better, we have lots of companies interested in Georgia rugby projects – I mean the national team and Black Lion – this is very important for them as we have games in England, France, Wales. 

“I am sure after a few years that doors will start to open for us. We are sure that we deserve it, but it is not enough. We deserve it by our games, by our organisation, but Six Nations is a commercial project, they need much more from us. But we are going really well.”

Rugby Journal’s visit to see Georgia in action coincides with their final pool game in the 2024 Rugby Europe Championship. Spain are the opponents today, against whom they haven’t lost since 2012, and as such occasions like these have become somewhat routine for both Georgian players and supporters. That being said, there is no tangible lack of enthusiasm among the five thousand supporters that have sold out the Avchala Stadium, a half-hour drive from central Tbilisi, and they are creating an entertaining atmosphere on a cold spring afternoon. Fan culture here has clearly been inspired by the French way – the ultras keep the drums going all game, and there’s not one thought given to being quiet for the kicker. 

Despite a first half that ended closer than many would have expected, Georgia leading just 7-3 at the break, the hosts cleaned up their inaccuracies in attack to score 31 unanswered points in the second half on the way to a 38-3 victory. At the full-time whistle, the difficulty of Georgia’s current status in the rugby world hits home. While they have never been closer to joining rugby’s top tier, the reality of the here-and-now is that the majority of Georgia’s games remain a foregone conclusion. 

Georgia captain Merab Sharikadze made his debut fourteen years ago as an energetic eighteen-year-old, and despite Georgia’s dominance in the Rugby Europe Championship for his whole career, it’s only in the last few seasons that he’s enjoyed more regular competitive games. 

“If you don’t play against those [Tier One] teams, how are you going to improve?” he says as we speak after the final whistle against Spain. “The teams we are playing against regularly are normally weaker than us, that’s the reality. That’s good for them because every year they’re improving, they’re playing against stronger teams than they are. They are catching up with us, but for us it’s hard to catch up with someone else because we don’t have that much game time. The last few years the picture has been much better, but still, it’s not enough.” 

The standard of Rugby Europe may be slowly improving, but Georgia have not lost since 2017, an 8-7 defeat to Romania. This was the last season they lost the championship, the trophy going to Romania, but only after it was mistakenly awarded to Georgia on live TV. The joke was that, after years of domination, the organisers had forgotten that somebody else could actually win it. 

Given this dominance, does Merab believe Georgia deserve a place in the Six Nations? “I’m not saying that we deserve to be in the Six Nations, I’m saying rugby deserves tournaments to be more open. The strategy that rugby is going in [the closed-off World League], I’m not a fan of it, but maybe it is the road we need to go on, and maybe at some time something will change, and we’ll be a part of it.”

The 2023 World Cup, however, is evidence that Georgia still occupy an unfortunate no man’s land, too good for their own competition but not quite ready to regularly challenge the top tier; in Pool C, Georgia fell to two defeats against Tier One teams, 35-15 against Australia, 43-19 against Wales, as well as a 17-12 loss to Fiji. It was a very disappointing campaign for the Georgians – with their recent successes against Tier One nations, their mentality going into games of that stature had completely changed. “Before, against Australia or Wales, we never had the ambition to win the game, and now every time we step on the pitch we want to win,” Merab assures us. “Our mentality is that we can do it, and we have done it, against Italy and against Wales. It might sound weird but in the World Cup we weren’t very far away from winning those games, even though the scores went up at the end.” But while the Georgians wait for those results to come, their mentality will remain the basis on which they build. “We have a fight that we hold in ourselves, that’s the main thing. Everybody wants to see results, but you know why people support us a lot? Because it doesn’t matter if you lose or win, they see us fighting, that’s what a Georgian mentality at heart is. That is our trademark as a national team – you give everything.” 

The evening after Georgia’s win, with a semi-final against Romania confirmed, some of Georgia’s most ardent rugby fans have gathered to review the game over a beer. We join members of Section 208, a Georgia rugby supporters club, in Browns Bar, the pub that was the choice of raucous Gloucester fans on their trip here for the Challenge Cup in December, as they share their thoughts on their lives as rugby lovers in Georgia. 

“There are not many people in Georgia that love rugby,” admits Luka, the founder of Section 208. “Let’s say if twenty per cent of Georgian people love the Georgia national team, only 0.5 per cent love rugby in general. Maybe people will watch Lyon in the Top 14 because a Georgian is playing, but there’s way more supporters of the Georgian national team than rugby in general.

“People here understand the very basic things [in rugby], but often you need to explain what’s going on. So, the more games we have here the better because rugby will become the norm.”

Luka fell in love with rugby after Georgia’s almost-heroics against Ireland in the 2007 World Cup, and has since travelled across the world watching them play. He started the group a year ago and has gathered a thousand supporters. 

There are hardcore fans here, albeit in slim numbers, but the current state of Georgian rugby is not conducive to a thriving fan culture. “It’s hard to get excited,” says Luka. “We had the World Cup, it was the pinnacle of rugby, and after that we moved to games that we win easily.” The feeling amongst the supporters is that the monotony has led to a lack of motivation for rugby in Georgia. “After 2007 there was a big rugby development here, but then it suddenly kind of stopped, especially with the 2019 World Cup, you could feel the dip.”

“The entire rugby community just lacks motivation, because we are bored,” adds Levan, another fan. “How many times can you play against these teams? Since 2012 we have only lost two matches. Imagine every spring you have two, three games, but you already know you will win.”

It’s not just the lack of competition, but also the lack of regularity. After their semi-final against Romania, there will be a blackout for the national team on domestic soil until November, with the Rugby Europe Championship final moved to the Stade de France this year. The reality is that while Georgia can celebrate increased matches against Tier One, more often than not they are played outside Georgia. “As fans, we can only watch it on TV,” continues Luka. “We’ve had Fiji v Georgia twice in recent years, once in England and once in Spain. We played France in France, Wales in Wales, the only team that travelled here was Italy, and that’s only because we have been demanding it for so long.”

There has been some improvement since 2021 with the establishment of Black Lion; with more regular games to go and watch, the fan culture has begun to grow. “That consistency of games has been so good. We as fans got to see each other so much more often, we’ve developed chants, we’ve started drinking together and growing more friends. Before the game against Spain, we had like two hundred people together two hours before the game just drinking beers.

“For the Challenge Cup there was good food around the stadium, good beers, there was music, so you could bring your non-rugby friends and they could enjoy it too. It was the first time we had this in Georgia.”

Joining the United Rugby Championship (URC) then, the next step that the union are actively pursuing, is a tantalising prospect for Georgian fans, as it would bring fifteen guaranteed home games a year in the league, plus more in the Challenge Cup. “If I could choose between joining the Six Nations tomorrow or the URC, I’d pick URC,” says Luka, as everyone nods in agreement. “For me as a fan, it’s consistency all year around. Also, we won’t be competitive in the Six Nations unless we are in the URC. We have a couple of great players in the Top 14, but we need a whole team to be competitive. We have lots of very good young players at under-18 and under-20, but if they go to the French clubs only some will play and others only on rotation. If they stay and play in Didi 10, they don’t improve because the level isn’t high enough, so that’s why Black Lion is so good for us. They get good training, good food, and that was good enough for us to beat Wales. Imagine if we were in the URC?”

When it comes to the Six Nations, fundamentally fans just want to see rugby become a more open sport, even if Georgia aren’t the beneficiaries. “Georgia doesn’t have a lot of money, but Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, they have money,” says Luka. “So, if they see an opportunity where they can be one of the best, then it will give them stimuli to invest and develop. But what they see at the moment is Georgia right now, or Romania twenty years ago, seeing that they’ve done really well, but never got given an opportunity. At the moment, rugby is not giving these countries any motivation to invest in the sport.” 

Georgians are resigned to the fact they must continue to be patient with the Six Nations dream, or even accept that the promised land might never be reached. As one supporter jokes, “It’s easier to join NATO than the Six Nations.”

Story by James Price

Pictures by Richard Johnson

This extract was taken from issue 25 of Rugby.
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