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Rivan
Ali was a little late home to celebrate the Kurdish
new year with his family on Monday night.
Improbably, for a 14-year-old who grew up in the
northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, it clashed with his
rugby league training.
No matter that Rivan was completely unaware of rugby
of either code before arriving in London roughly
four years ago, or that his chance introduction to
league came well after that. He has adapted to the
alien sport quickly enough to earn a place on one of
the Rugby Football League's elite national training
camps, and now dreams of a professional Super League
career.
Football and volleyball were the main sporting
diversions for Rivan and his brothers at home in
Iraq's fourth largest city, in the desert north of
Baghdad and Tikrit where there were usually more
pressing issues to consider.
"The first rugby I saw was the [union] World Cup,
just on normal TV," he said. "I didn't even know
what league or union was. But rugby league's a
really nice game. You can take your aggression out
and it keeps you fit as well."
"He's got real ability as a second-row, especially
when you think he's still only slight and has plenty
of time to fill out," said Caro Wild, the Rugby
Football League's regional development manager for
London and the south. "There's no question of him
being selected for the national camp, which is for
the best 40 players in the country in each age
group, on sympathy grounds because he's from London
or because of his background in Iraq. He was there
on merit."
Rivan has an understandably teenage vagueness about
the exact circumstances in which he arrived in west
London. "My dad was here for a bit longer, so it was
good when we came - me, my brothers and our mother -
to be with him. All I knew was that we were coming
out to London, a big city and everything. But it's
quite good; they help you out a lot."
He describes himself as a Kurd rather than as an
Iraqi, and he talks in disarmingly fluent English
about the Kurdish people's hopes of independence.
"We've been wanting that for a long time, but
hopefully we'll get it now. It is difficult thinking
about what's happening at home. My grandparents and
a few uncles and aunties still live there and we
speak on the phone about once a month, just to check
up on them. It's good that Saddam's gone now."
That is not the sort of topic that crops up often in
rugby league's elite camps. One of the reasons they
were set up was the chance they provided for
youngsters to mix with their contemporaries from
different areas - for Wiganers to consider the
possibility of socialising with their rivals from St
Helens, for example, or to hear the weird and
wonderful accents from Hull, Cumbria and these days
even London and Wales. But Rivan's selection for the
camp at Mount St Mary's College in Sheffield took
that educational process to an entirely new level.
"I was kind of nervous; it's like the first time
here going away for a week from my family and
stuff," he admitted. "But it was really good. I got
to meet new people, learned a lot, that sort of
thing. As you get into the game you find out more
and more. I don't have Sky but I usually go round my
mate Ahmed's house to watch the Super League
matches. He's a prop."
He is also an Egyptian, further evidence of the
cosmopolitan nature of rugby league in the capital.
Ben Alade, one of the other two Londoners who
attended the national camp with Rivan, has a
Nigerian background, and Wild explains that the
sport has deliberately targeted ethnic minorities.
"In the 15 months we've been on the Active Sports
Programme funded by Sport England, of the 2,972
rugby league participants 1,732 have been from
minorities," said Wild. "That's at least double the
number from any other sport.
"It's always in our mind from the outset, partly
because it's what Sport England want, but we also
take a lot of pride in it. We prefer going to kids
who haven't got any sporting opportunities at the
moment, to places like Brixton, Haringey or
Lewisham, where the chances aren't the same as in
your leafy Richmonds.
"There's a fit there with rugby league anyway; it's
always been a sport for the underdog, the working
class. Just look at the current Great Britain team:
there's plenty of lads there who grew up in deprived
areas, as well as ethnic minorities.
"The raw talent is definitely there, as you can see
from people like Rivan and guys like Joe Mbu, who's
already made it to the Broncos first team, and Desi
Williams, another young Londoner who's now up at
Wigan.
"But the pathways we've got in place now are far
better. There's no reason why the next Ellery Hanley
or Jason Robinson shouldn't come from London rather
than Leeds."
Or perhaps even Kirkuk.
http://sport.guardian.co.uk
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