Rugby stars ready to tackle conflict

A GEORGIAN rugby player who was in the national squad that came agonisingly close to shocking Ireland at last year’s Rugby World Cup said he is ready to go home and fight for his country if needs be.

Davit Kinchagishvili, a front rower for Brive in the French Top 14, is one of a hundred Georgian rugby players in France who are ready to swap their combat skills on the field for real-life warfare.

The armed conflict between Georgia and Russia has touched the lives of the nations’s rugby players, many of whom play professionally in France.

Though a ceasefire was negotiated with the help of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia declared yesterday that Russian tanks were still on the attack.

This has left many Georgian rugby players in France anxiously watching their televisions, ready to head home and serve their country, in a different way to winning a test cap.

“We’ve been speaking amongst ourselves. We consulted with each other and 80% of us are ready to go off to battle if, in the next two or three days, the situation does not improve,” said Kinchagishvili. “We’ll all go together. We’re obliged to go, it’s our country. We want to defend it, it’s normal.”

Clermont’s Davit Zirakashvili had already bought his ticket to return to Georgia, but with the news of the peace accord, did not leave.