Polish Rugby League Expands

[TheInternationalist]

In the city of Lodz Rugby League continues to grow.

With over a dozen senior schools already playing a sport that is yet to be official recognized for the past 3 years.

It is set for a new wave of expansion with a plan to train additional PE teachers in the sport of Rugby League.

Big announcements are set to be made for 2015, as the sport continues to grow from the ground up.

 

[Foreign Legion]

Great work

 

[deluded pom?]

I didn't realise they had schools playing the game. Great work. Kids are the future.

 

[The Partisan]

Something the RLEF / RLIF could possibly investigate - a polish heritage referee with international experience !


http://www.ausport.gov.au/participating/officials/high_performance/national_officiating_scholarship_program_profiles/national_officiating_scholarship_holders/2013_scholarship_holders/2013_scholarship_holders

Zbigniew Przeklasa-Adamski - Rugby League

Extreme heat and extreme cold have handed Sydney’s Ziggy Przeklasa-Adamski his two best experiences to-date as a rugby league official.
Two years ago he was standby referee and running the touch line in the Toyota Cup in the middle of a Canberra winter. It was so cold that the referee tore his hamstring 13 minutes into the 80-minute game and Przeklasa-Adamski suddenly found himself debuting in the Toyota Cup.
“The coaches were happy and I was happy with my performance and that kind of gave me a great opportunity that I wasn’t expecting at the time and from there on in I just really knuckled down and concentrated and tried to approach everything that I do now in relation to my football and training as a professional,” he said.
It wasn’t long before he had an experience to match it when he refereed the Papua New Guinea national rugby league grand final in Port Moresby at the end of 2012.
“It was the fiercest, hardest, quickest game in the most humid conditions I’ve ever refereed before,” Przeklasa-Adamski said. “It was also the biggest crowd I’ve ever refereed in front of, probably 25,000 people, and it was a great experience.”
In recognition of his burgeoning elite career Przeklasa-Adamski has been awarded an Australian Sports Commission National Officiating Scholarship and the 26-year-old said he was “stoked”. “I was very excited and honoured to be nominated by my coaches in particular as I hold many referees in our squad in high esteem,” he said. “It was pretty humbling.”
Coming from a Polish background, Przeklasa-Adamski’s family expected he would gravitate toward soccer but his parents Jerry and Elizabeth happily drove him around for 10 years when he was playing and fully supported his move into refereeing in the Parramatta Districts at the age of 14.
He continued to surprise them when he finished an economics degree but went on to start up his own very successful landscaping business, having spent his university years labouring for a landscaper and “loving it”.
He said many of the skills he has learned from starting his business cross over onto the rugby pitch and vice versa. “You definitely learn how to manage people and get a feel for their emotions and it goes hand-in-hand with refereeing I guess, in dealing with people and being able to empathise but also sometimes put your foot down and blow the penalty when you have to.”

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