This summer, just weeks before the planet’s sporting elite converges on Paris for the 2024 Olympic Games, Cayman’s top touch rugby players will make their debut on a world stage of their own.
After a decade-long push to become one of around 50 countries with a ratified national touch rugby association, the Cayman Islands is sending its first-ever squad to the Touch World Cup, taking place 15-21 July in Nottingham, UK.
Held every four years since 1988, the tournament serves as the pinnacle of a sport that Cayman Touch Association (CTA) co-founder and head coach Scott McCarty says is like “high-paced chess”.
Cayman’s 32-strong squad comprises two teams in two different divisions and features previously capped international rugby and touch players as well as a few family pairings, from a mother and son to a husband-and-wife powerhouse duo.
Describing the sport ahead of Cayman’s historic world cup debut, McCarty told the Compass, “There’s an aspect of touch that makes it like high-paced chess – you’ve got six versus six and all it takes is a touch on the hair, on someone’s hat or their clothes.
“There’s a lot of manipulating players, a lot of forethought and a lot of understanding of what each team is doing. A lot of it has to be premeditated, but you also have to react.
“It’s an examination of the top two inches as well as your athletic ability. Rugby has that too, but it’s more about brute force and physical strength superiority, whereas touch is certainly a lot of athleticism but it’s also a bit more strategy under short timeframes.”
On the ins and outs of the game, he added, “It’s a game of sprinting, both on attack and defence – in the sub box you’re resting, then you’re on and sprinting, then maybe a couple minutes later, repeat”.
Aside from the lack of full contact, another aspect that McCarty says sets touch apart from its sibling sport is its inclusivity. A record 188 teams are entered across 13 divisions at this year’s Touch World Cup, with most split by age and gender. Two, however, – the mixed open and mixed over 30s divisions, in which Cayman has entered its teams – incorporate men and women together.
“There’s not many sports where men and women can play competitively with and against each other … and then you’ve got all the different age groupings,” McCarty said. “It just makes for an incredibly inclusive sport.”
With 29 total countries in the mixed open division, Cayman’s team has been drawn in Pool B alongside the likes of New Zealand and South Africa.
Ranging in age from 15 to 34, the squad combines youthful energy and some seasoned stars – with Doug Rowland and Tommy Kehoe falling somewhere in the middle of those two categories.
The two are firm friends, having grown up playing rugby in Cayman alongside several of their teammates, including Matthew Hanson.
“In our pod of three boys, it’ll be me (link), Tommy (middle) and Matthew (wing), which I think is really nice because us three get on really well,” Rowland, 22, told the Compass. “We’ve played competitive sports with each other since we were little, so there’s a good connection there already.”
Both Rowland and Kehoe also joined the United States team that competed at the Youth Touch World Cup in Malaysia in 2019, and relish the challenge of facing off against two of the world’s top touch teams in New Zealand (the “Touch Blacks”) and South Africa (the “Touchboks”) once again.
“[Teams like New Zealand and South Africa] are very good, but they’re really fun to play against just to see the skill they have,” Rowland said. “I think you rise to the level; it raises your game a bit when you’re playing against better opposition, so hopefully that can happen again.”
Kehoe, a 21-year-old student and rugby player at Cardiff Metropolitan University, has also played contact rugby internationally for Cayman.
“The main teams will be [the likes of] Australia, New Zealand, England, Wales, so it’ll be interesting to see how we fare up against those lot, but then there’s also some other small countries that I never realised play touch either,” Kehoe said.
“It’ll be quite cool to see how we go up against those and see if we can push for a few wins.”
Several mixed open players, including Rowland and Kehoe, are currently at university – meaning that aside from rigorous fitness regimes sent through by McCarty and a three-day pre-tournament training camp in Nottingham, their preparation includes a lot of whiteboard strategy sessions via video call and reviewing of team practice tapes.
“Touch is a game of coordination,” McCarty explains. “There’re lots of different phases and you have plans for all those phases, so there’s a lot of learning and repetition and set plays and things like that that everyone needs to learn.”
Also among the mixed open team’s top players are the husband-and-wife duo Jason and Tiana Sinclair.
Both were named in the 2023 US Nationals overall team, comprising the top three males and females, after a strong showing in October, which also – following the CTA’s ratification the year prior – served as the scene of the Cayman Islands’ first and only international test to date: an exhibition in which they were narrowly beaten by the USA team.
Tommy – the brother of Cayman’s footballing phenom Molly Kehoe and son of Cayman Rugby Football Union president Mick Kehoe – also isn’t the only Kehoe competing for the 345 at this summer’s world cup.
“Some of our teammates find it funny he yells ‘mum!’ when he wants the ball from me,” said Lisa Kehoe, a wing in Cayman’s mixed over 30s team, about training alongside her son over his Easter break from university.
Having first played rugby in Cayman over 20 years ago, Kehoe travelled across the Caribbean for contact rugby 7s and 15s tournaments as a member of the Cayman Women’s National Team before retiring and switching her focus to touch.
“I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that I’m actually playing in a World Cup, against many big countries,” she told the Compass.
On representing Cayman alongside her son, she added, “I was extremely happy to be selected, especially at my age and after recently recovering from an Achilles tear, and even more exciting that I can share the experience with Tommy!”
With McCarty primarily tasked with coaching the mixed open team, the CTA also opted to bring in the experience of two-time Australia Touch World Cup team member Shannon Warren to serve as both technical advisor to the open team and coach of the mixed over 30s.
Though competing in a smaller, 17-team division, Cayman’s over 30s still face a tall task to finish in Pool A’s top four teams and book their ticket to the quarter-finals, with the likes of Australia, Wales and England standing in their way.
But McCarty hopes months of preparation and years of anticipation will not go unrewarded in Nottingham.
“It’s every four years, so we want to do as well as we possibly can at the tournament,” he said. “We want to come away feeling like we’ve represented ourselves, and especially Cayman, as well as we possibly can – especially as it’s our first one.”
And the action doesn’t stop there for Cayman touch rugby, for whom the future looks increasingly bright following this first venture onto the international scene, as the under-15 and under-18 teams prepare for the 2024 Junior Touch Championships in France in August.
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