‘Crash! Bam! Wallop!’ For the next two weeks, the evening air around the Andheri Sports Complex in Mumbai will be filled with the noise of some of the most athletic sportspeople on the planet crashing into (or ripping past) each other as India witnesses a new addition to its burgeoning basket of franchise leagues: the Rugby Premier League.
A sevens rugby tournament that will have some of the best players on the planet playing alongside the best Indian talent, the RPL holds great promise — from both the short-term entertainment point of view as well as a larger growth-of-the-game perspective.
Rugby India president Rahul Bose, who most know as a Bollywood actor, hopes that those sounds of the sport he loves will get transported across households in the country via their TV or mobile screens… and that it will then lead to a massive knock-on effect. For Bose, as federation head, the RPL is simply “a means to an end”.
Rugby, Bose says, is played in 322 districts in the country (about 40%), so how will the RPL help expand the footprint of the sport in the country? For one thing, Bose believes expansion is the wrong way to look at it. “You don’t broaden; you deepen,” he says.
“You don’t want the talented [rugby] players to go anywhere else. You don’t want them to play another sport. You want them to keep playing [rugby]. So, you have to get it right in the first 322, before moving onto the next 322. And that itself will take a few years.”
“How do you do that: improve the quality of coaching, the grounds that they’re playing on, the money that they could get, the pathway… For parents, and for children, it’s important to have that pathway.”
Sukumar Hembram started playing rugby because it was a means to get out of his Don Bosco hostel in Kolkata… and to get chocolates. “We all laughed when we saw the ball for the first time, but we would only get chocolates if we tried playing.” Now an India player, Sukumar works with his Kolkata club’s (Future Hope Harlequins) community outreach program, Khelo Rugby, to teach rugby across 32 communities in the city.
He has been picked by Hyderabad Heroes and is learning to level up quickly when training with the best of the best. “It wasn’t easy at first; they’re so fast, it’s hard to catch them,” he says. “But the more you train, the easier that becomes. The more you play with them, the more you feel that we are also capable of being at a similar level.”
Before getting to that similar level, part of Rugby India’s idea of creating a player pipeline is by convincing state governments to accept rugby as one of the sports that will lead to government jobs. “Over 150 of our players have got government jobs in Odisha, Maharashtra and other states,” says Bose. One of the drivers then, is to increase the number of states that accept this. After that, he says, the Federation has to start paying players who get to the national camps. “And the dream is one day anybody who plays for the state gets paid.”
𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐧𝐨𝐰, 𝐰𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 🔥
The teams are locked in and training hard for the #GMRRugbyPremierLeague 🔒🏉#RugRugMeinRugby #RPL | @RugbyIndia | @sports_gmr | @RahulBose1 | @ChennaiBulls7s | @Mumbai_Dreamers pic.twitter.com/JgaL4kc032
— Rugby Premier League (@RPLIndia) June 13, 2025
“There are 1600 players in the system [national senior and age-group] right now,” he says. If the federation had to pay them around Rs 8000 ($93) a month, that works out to Rs 16 Cr ($185,500) says Bose. “So, we need to raise that Rs 16 crore to make that happen. How are you going to do that if no one knows that you play the sport in the country?”
“The only way to do that is to make sure you are on television. And you have a kicka** product that sponsors will come in for… that’s the Rugby Premier League.”
It’s more than just money, though. For Bose, the RPL brings with it massive changes in infrastructure and scouting. “As soon as season 1 is over, the six owners will want their teams to win the next edition. They will send scouts across the country, find the best players and bring them back to the cities. If each team gets 35 players, that’s 200+ across six centres.” With the teams taking care of infrastructure — from grounds to physical therapists to masseurs and nutrition coaches — Bose sees this as an integral part to Rugby India’s plans to deepen the hold of the sport.
What lends him such confidence is also the long-term nature of it all. GMR sports, who will be running the league with Rugby India and are title sponsors, have a 30-year tie up with the RPL. “It’s 10 years plus 10 plus 10,” says Satyam Trivedi, CEO of GMR Sports. “10 years, we feel, is too short. Which is why we have the option to extend by another 10 plus 10 years.” Having been long-time investors in cricket (Delhi Daredevils/Capitals) and kabaddi (UP Yoddhas), they understand the dynamics of it. “The audience will take at least three to five years to understand the new league… and for the franchise and league to reach a breakeven point. Long term is the way to look at it.”
If the need for funds and more competition is an immediate need for the federation, it’s even more so for the players.
Rugby suffers from an ailment that affects many sports across India – limited competition. If they are lucky, Indian rugby players get effectively three months of rugby playing time — the national games (if it happens), the national camps (where a lot of it is just training) and local club competitions (very short duration).
Ben Gollings, rugby sevens legend and now head coach of Fiji and the Chennai Bulls, says there’s no substitute to actual playing more. “The missing link a lot of developing countries in the sport have is that you need to be playing rugby,” he says. “You need to expose them to a better level of the game… and just more of it.”
“If you take the Fijians, who are arguably the best sevens players in the world, they are playing this game week-in, week-out. You are continually able to not just get the work in in training but also apply it in a game scenario.”
New Zealand sevens hero (and their current national team coach) Tomasi Cama jr. agrees. The Delhi Redz coach says “the game teaches itself. For you to be good at this game, you have to play. You can train, you can do the drills, the skills, but it’s when you play that’s where you get found out.”
England coaching great Mike Friday, who took USA sevens rugby to the mainstream in his decade as the national team coach there, says, everyone (associated with the game) needs to “focus on the basics of the game first.” He says, “a lot of people want to focus on the fun stuff, the tactical stuff and all the strategies. But strategies don’t work if your players aren’t physically prepared, and they can’t technically execute the basic skills of the game.” For him it’s about “building a decathlete and then arming them with technical skills.”
“The long-term strategy is everything, which means it’s going to be a rocky road at times but you’ve got to stick to the plan.”
Rugby Premier League: All you need to know about India’s newest franchise league
Talk, though, to some of the Indian players in the league — who made between Rs 50,000 ($580) and Rs 5.5 Lakhs ($6377) at the auction in April, more money than they’ve ever seen since taking up the sport — and you realise just how big an impact RPL has already made in the rugby community.
Mohammed Jasim entered college as a Taekwondo player but switched to rugby after being convinced by a friend (with the academic bonus of grace marks and a certificate) but soon fell in love with it. This was a problem, though, because rugby isn’t exactly mainstream where he comes from in Malappuram (Kerala), an area famous for its love of football. Currently studying for a physical education degree in order to apply for a state job, Jasim does daily wage work to make ends meet at times. The 23-year-old says he is able to keep up with this sport only because of the support his mother and father, a fisherman, extend. “They don’t force me to go take a job somewhere like the other boys in our area… even if they don’t know what rugby is at all, they’ve always believed in me.”
Before getting to the national camp, he struggled to get a couple of games even to play a year, but the perseverance has finally paid off for Jasim. Picked by the Chennai Bulls, he’s the only Malayalee in the RPL. What he’s impressed with is the quality of coaching, focus on recovery and physical conditioning, and just the sheer level of his teammates like Terry Kennedy (Irish, former World Player of the Year).
Ganesh Majhi, meanwhile, took to the sport because that’s what most of his seniors at the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences did. Ganesh is from the Bonda tribe in Malkangiri (Odisha) but has been at KISS for most of his life. Under financial pressure, he quit KISS and rugby once to travel to Chennai and take up a job. “It was the first time I saw Rs 3000 ($35),” he says, but he was soon convinced by his coach at KISS to come back and focus on rugby, and that financial assistance would be provided by the institute.
He was U-20 national team captain in 2023 and now with the Mumbai Dreamers, he loves that he’s able to correct the small mistakes he didn’t even know he was making (with the sidestep, with passing). It’s in these little things that often go unnoticed that players get truly invested.
As we get ready for kickoff, most associated with the RPL believe it will be an instant hit… the sport lends itself to the kind of television Indian viewers like to see, after all, but the league’s true success will be seen only a few years from now – in how it will help elevate Indian rugby. A clue perhaps, lies in the eyes of Jasim. When asked just how long it will take Indian players to bridge the gap to the top players, whether it can even be done, there was a brief, but very real, flash of anger. “We are all humans,” he said after a pause. Give us [the means], we’ll get there.”
That anger, that drive, that perseverance… that’s what gives you the feeling that this just might be it, that the RPL can truly help push Indian rugby to the next level and beyond.
