It is with great pride that I announce the Dallas Rugby Football Club has been awarded the 2013 USARFU Emirates Airlines Men’s Round of 16. The past two years, TRU teams have traveled to San Diego for this event. As the Austin Blacks, DARC and the Dallas RFC can attest, this has been a very expensive trip costing about $15,000.00 for a single team (players and coaches), double if you qualify two teams!
With this announcement, teams should be able to focus on the season and not worry about coming up with the required costs to travel to such an event. The Dallas RFC spent a tremendous amount of man hours and cash to put this bid together. We coordinated four cities, countless hotels and other support entities to capture this bid. We are going to ask each team making the event in May to ‘donate’ $1,000.00 to the Dallas RFC to help offset our costs. When you read this, just remember that $1,000.00 is a fraction of the cost of going to San Diego or San Francisco. I will guarantee you, if this letter was coming from any team in the TRU and they were asking for the donation, Dallas would be the first to write the check upon qualifying.
Of course, teams donating the money will be given parking passes, lunch coupons, and beer tickets.
All teams eligible for this tournament will be receiving a ‘tournament package’ in early February that will provide hotel offerings (the furthest hotel from the pitches is 3 miles) and other information. This will allow you to plan any required fund raising well before the May tournament dates.
Have a great holiday and be safe. See you all in 2013!
Jeff Kolberg
President, Dallas RFC