Was rugby league ever played in Moldova?

[Kurt Angle]

Errh Yankee Boy......

Romanians (therefore Moldavians) aren't a Romance derived culture at all.

Romance-based languages sprang from Latin, and these are primarily French, Italian and Spanish.

Romanians are predominately Slavic.

The word caucasians comes from the term derving the primary racial groupings.. there are 3 in the world.

Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid.

Negroids have dark skin, thick black hair that for the most part curls, black eyes and usually broad nostrils. This would be known to us now as Africans. I can't remember where the NEGR prefix comes into it.

Mongoloid is termed for people who have dark skin, thin straight black hair, black eyes and the second layer of their eyes bridging to their nose. This would be known as Asian to us now. The MONGO prefix is dervied because in historical times, the first presence was current day Inner Mongolia.

Caucusoid is termed for people with pale skin, a range of hair colour and eyes. I.e white people, turks, persians. The CAUCUS prefix is termed because the first presence of this grouping of people was around the caucus's area, north of the black sea. Eventually this group migrated West and South.

 

[griff]

Sorry Kurt, Romanian is a Romance language, same as Italian, Spanish, French and a few archaic regional languages. It also sprang from Latin.

Slavic languages would have had an influence on Romanian.

From what I can gather there is a bit of disdain held for slavs by Romanians. Shouldn't forget that Romania were an Axis power and invaded Russia only 60-something years ago, in the lifetimes of many of the people living in 'Transnistria'.

 

[screeny]

However, I also want RL to go about things correctly and as an adult sport.

A federation, in the sports usage of the word not in your dictionary definition variable, is associated with govt.

Puerto Rico competes in the Olympics, even though it is part of the US. .

Bloody hell! I think you should tell Puerto Rico that it's part of the USA! They've been going all this time as an independent sovereign state while they're actually part of the US!?

 

[Big Bunny]

Moldovans are very similar to Romanians. Romanians are a Romance-language speaking culture, who (I'm assuming) came from the ancient Romans. Thus, both would be Caucasian.

Also, I think "Red Arrows" are Strela Kazan, who are refered to on many sites as the "Kazan Arrows," just as Dynamo are refered to as "Moscow Magicians." Does anyone know if Strela means Arrows in Tatar or Russian?

Strela is Russian for arrow, but the meaning is a little messy, since a Russian missle is a strela as well. The Kazan Arrows club were in operation at the time that Red Arrow were in existence so it isn't them. The only teams with players that have an Asian appearance in them are both Kazan teams.

The one club that I am most curious about, as there seems to be very little info on their former existence is "Stars of Asia."

 

[russ13]

I thought 'strela' meant lightning in Russian.

My mates & I raced a horse (mare) called Strela Blaze about 20 years ago. She won races races at Doomben & Ipswich. Who said racing was not educational?

 

[Big Bunny]

If that's the case it seems strange that they still use both terms in the clubs description. Although it mostly seems to be the totalrl.com writers who use 'strela.'

 

[Jeffles]

I always thought Strela meant star.

 

[joshreading]

I will be in Ukraine (4 weeks) soon so I will try and track down any Rugby or League played there, if any. Does anyone have any contacts.

 

[Generalissimo Stalin]

I will be in Ukraine (4 weeks) soon so I will try and track down any Rugby or League played there, if any. Does anyone have any contacts.

you will be in the soviet republic of ukraine?? - i have contacts in chernovtsy . uzhhorod, lviv,kharkov and dnipropetrovsk but do you speak Russian/Ukrainian as they speak no english.

be aware of customs at the international airport in kiev as they will try to fleece you when leaving - weigh your luggage

 

[Big Bunny]

You aren't a nuclear arms dealer are you Josh?

 

[joshreading]

You caught me Big Bunny

I have friends I will be meeting in Kiev, they have also told me the airport is a bit of a pain to get through at times, so I guess we will see.

 

[TheFirstRabbitoh]

Oh jeez,

How about we actually get a RUSSIAN to explain some of the confusion

Yes, strela means arrow. Red arrow is krasnaya strela.

Transnistria doesn't really exist - it's the Russian-dominated east back of the Dniestr (however it's spelt in English) river. They cracked the s***s in the early nineties because the rest of Moldova (which is populated by ethnic Moldovans, which are about as different from Romanians as, say Tasmanians are from mainland Aussies (the only difference in languages comes from Moldovan being written in cyrillic in the Soviet days - spoken they're identical)) wanted to reunite with Romania - and the Russians there didn't fancy being an ethnic minority in greater Romania.

The main city in the Transnitria region is Tiraspol... Which to my knowledge is the only place the RL was ever played in this particular neck of the woods.

And by the way - yes, whoever said Romanian is a romance language is absolutely correct. The Romanians are surrounded by Slavs and Magyars, but they are a Latin people.

P.S. Don't get me started on the politics of Tatarstan...

 

[The Partisan]

If anyone ever accusses RL supporters of being bone heads ever again, I will refer them to this thread. Informative and educational in regards to world history, geography and the birth of mankind. ;-) ;-) ;-)

 

[screeny]

If anyone ever accusses RL supporters of being bone heads ever again, I will refer them to this thread. Informative and educational in regards to world history, geography and the birth of mankind. ;-) ;-) ;-)

Yeah....but this thread could still do with some biff.....

 

[yankeeboy]

I don't think politics should matter- they should just play league.

Who really cares whether Tatarstan (or Transnistria) is recognized as an independant nation. The International Olympic Comitteecertainly doesn't. Four U.S. posessions have NOCs (US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and Guam). It should only really matter that a "country" can put up a team, and politics should have nothing to do with it.

The reason Russian league is somewhat sucessful (correct me if I'm wrong here) is that they are financed by casino owners, who I've read have Mafia connections. If we can get Moldova to be a sucess by using corrupt government members of the Transnistrian government, so be it.

As long as slave labour or death isn't financing league, it really shouldn't matter where the financing comes from. Politics should be left out of the arena of sport.

 

[Big Bunny]

I don't think politics should matter- they should just play league.

Who really cares whether Tatarstan (or Transnistria) is recognized as an independant nation. The International Olympic Comitteecertainly doesn't. Four U.S. posessions have NOCs (US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and Guam). It should only really matter that a "country" can put up a team, and politics should have nothing to do with it.

The reason Russian league is somewhat sucessful (correct me if I'm wrong here) is that they are financed by casino owners, who I've read have Mafia connections. If we can get Moldova to be a sucess by using corrupt government members of the Transnistrian government, so be it.

As long as slave labour or death isn't financing league, it really shouldn't matter where the financing comes from. Politics should be left out of the arena of sport.

I agree that politics should be left out of sport, but simply saying that and ignoring the reality of the matter is naive.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't a national funding package halted several years ago due to the RRL having an open mind to Chechyn independance?

I also recall that the league found itself on the right side of the line when in its early days members of the national team helped defend the parliament building and the president, when under attack by tank fire.

 

[griff]

I agree that politics should be left out of sport, but simply saying that and ignoring the reality of the matter is naive.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't a national funding package halted several years ago due to the RRL having an open mind to Chechyn independance?

I also recall that the league found itself on the right side of the line when in its early days members of the national team helped defend the parliament building and the president, when under attack by tank fire.

Saying politics should be kept separate from sport is exactly what the Apartheid regime in South Africa said when they were arguing against their exclusion from world sport in the 70s and 80s. If you think sport and politics should be kept separate then you would also have to be against Andy Flower and Henry Olonga's pro-democracy protest while playing cricket for Zimbabwe. Politics and sport go hand in hand - good example is the push for FIFA recognition of the Catalan soccer team as a step towards independence.

I heard something similar a few years ago when (bit hazy on details so could be wrong) an RFL development officer in Russia was kicked out because he was identified as supporting Tatarstan independence by promoting the Tatarstan 'national' side. This was when Chechnya first blew up and I think the previous Russian government was over-reacting about independence movements.

Not sure about being on the right side of that tank dispute. If it's the one I'm thinking of, it was when the Russian parliament moved against some of Yetsin's policies, so he disbanded parliament and when they refused to go, ordered the tanks in to pound them into submission. Yeltsin ended up winning, so they ended up on the losing side of that one.

 

[TheFirstRabbitoh]

The reason Russian league is somewhat sucessful (correct me if I'm wrong here) is that they are financed by casino owners, who I've read have Mafia connections. If we can get Moldova to be a sucess by using corrupt government members of the Transnistrian government, so be it.

It's only a minor exaggeration to say that EVERYONE with any amount of money in Russia has Mafia connections.

Mafia activity accounts for somewhere between 10 and 20% of the Russian economy - some argue that it's not neccesarily a bad thing... at least this way there's some growth somewhere.

BTW - The IOC would never, ever allow Transnistria or Tatarstan to compete as separate nations at the Olympics. The difference is that the US dependancies you mentioned aren't part of the USA, they're political dependencies.

Tatarstan may be autonomous within Russia, but it's still part of Russia, and has a majority Russian population (ethnic Tatars are only about 45% of the population). The independence push there pretty much only exists as rhetoric these days, a few pollies still agitate, but really if it didn't go 10 years back, it won't split off now.

Transnistria is part of Moldova - and not even the Russians recognise them as an independant state. ANYONE who gave Transnistria any leverage would be asking for a civil war (again).

 

[yakstorm]

Are we welcoming back Moldova to the fold?

 

[ed612313]

Nice...
Ive been to Moldova/Transnistria twice. 1st time was back in 2008. There was a Rugby league camp in Chisinau then but i missed it. Transnistria had a team at the time for sure and had a few junior teams.
So glad to see Chisinau in this Euro16 comp. Def need to get a jersey