Current season or competition:![]() | |
Sport | Rugby union |
---|---|
Number of teams | 5 |
Country | Malta |
Related competition | Mediterranean Bank Cup and Ray Elliot Cup |
The Malta Rugby Union National Championship, better known as the Cisk Lager League [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] for sponsorship reasons, is the highest tier of Rugby Union in Malta. It is sponsored by Cisk Lager and run by the Malta Rugby Football Union. Champions of the previous season play the winner of the Mediterranean Bank Cup, which runs parallel, in the Ray Elliot Cup, which serves a super cup.
The league is played in the Marsa Sports Complex since the clubs do not own stadiums. [7]
The league consists of five teams:
Former teams include Qormi Wasps, Valletta Lions, and Birkirkara Alligators.
Kinnie is a Maltese bittersweet carbonated soft drink brewed from bitter oranges and extracts of wormwood. It was first introduced in 1952 by the brewery Simonds Farsons Cisk, and continues to be produced by Farsons in Mriehel, Birkirkara, Malta.
Birkirkara is a city in the central region of Malta. It is the second most populous on the island, with 24,356 inhabitants as of 2020. The town consists of five autonomous parishes: Saint Helen, Saint Joseph the Worker, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Saint Mary and San Gorg Preca. The city's motto is In hoc signo vinces, and its coat of arms is a plain red cross, surmounted by a crown.
The Ospreys, formerly the Neath–Swansea Ospreys is one of the four professional rugby union teams from Wales. They compete in the United Rugby Championship and the European Rugby Champions Cup. The team formed as a result of Neath RFC and Swansea RFC combining to create a new merged entity, as part of the new regional structure of Welsh rugby, that began in 2003. They are also affiliated with a number of local semi-professional and amateur clubs, including Welsh Premier Division sides Aberavon RFC, Bridgend Ravens, and original founding clubs Neath and Swansea. The regional area represented by the team has widely become known for rugby purposes as 'Ospreylia'.
Dragons RFC are one of the four professional rugby union regional teams in Wales. They are owned by the Welsh Rugby Union and play their home games at Rodney Parade, Newport. They play in the United Rugby Championship and the European Rugby Champions Cup/European Rugby Challenge Cup. The region they represent covers an area of southeast Wales including Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Monmouthshire, Newport and Torfaen with a total population approaching 600,000 and they are affiliated with a number of semi-professional and amateur clubs throughout the area, including Pontypool RFC, Caerphilly RFC, Cross Keys RFC, Ebbw Vale RFC and Newport RFC.
Tag rugby, or flag rugby, is a non-contact team game in which each player wears a belt that has two velcro tags attached to it, or shorts with velcro patches. The mode of play is based on rugby league with many similarities to touch football, although tag rugby is often deemed a closer simulation of full contact rugby league than touch. Attacking players attempt to dodge, evade and pass a rugby ball while defenders attempt to prevent them scoring by "tagging" – pulling a velcro attached tag from the ball carrier, rather than a full contact tackle. Tag rugby is used in development and training by both rugby league and rugby union communities.
Neath Rugby Football Club is a Welsh rugby union club which plays in the Indigo Premiership for Season 2023/24. The club's home ground is The Gnoll, Neath. The team is known as the All Blacks because of the team colours: black with only a white cross pattée as an emblem. Neath RFC is the oldest rugby club in Wales, having been formed in 1871. They are feeder club to the Ospreys regional team.
Cardiff Rugby Football Club is a rugby union club based in Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. The club was founded in 1876 and played their first few matches at Sophia Gardens, shortly after which relocating to Cardiff Arms Park where they have been based ever since.
Rugby union in Cornwall is Cornwall's most popular spectator sport with a large following. The followers of the national side are dubbed Trelawny's Army. In 1991 and 1999 Cornwall won the County Championship final played at Twickenham Stadium, beating Yorkshire and Gloucestershire respectively to win the Cup. They had another strong spell in the 2010s, reaching seven of the eight finals contested between 2013 and 2022, winning four of them.
Simonds Farsons Cisk plc, commonly known as Farsons, is a Maltese food and beverage conglomerate whose businesses include brewing, sale and distribution of beer and soft drinks; importation, wholesale and retail of food and beverages; operation of franchised food retailers; and property development.
Rugby union in Scotland is a popular team sport. Scotland's national side today competes in the annual Six Nations Championship and the Rugby World Cup. The first ever international rugby match was played on 27 March 1871, at Raeburn Place in Edinburgh, when Scotland defeated England in front of 4,000 people. Professional clubs compete in the United Rugby Championship, European Rugby Champions Cup and European Rugby Challenge Cup, while the Scottish League Championship exists for over 200 amateur and semi-professional clubs, as does a knock-out competition, the Scottish Cup. The governing body, the Scottish Rugby Union (SRU), is one of the ten first-tier member nations of World Rugby.
The USA Rugby Super League, usually known as the Super League, was a national rugby union competition which ran from 1997 to 2012, contested by nine clubs in the United States by its last year. In the 2013 season, it was replaced by the USA Rugby Elite Cup.
Delon Anthony Armitage is a rugby union coach and former player who played at wing or fullback for Lyon OU and is capped for England. He also occasionally played centre. Armitage started out at London Irish and Toulon. He sometimes did place kicking, mainly from a distance or if the regular kicker was unable to take it. He left Toulon at the end of the 2015/2016 season to join French Top 14 side Lyon. He retired at the end of the 2018/2019 season.
The Malta national rugby union team are governed by the Malta Rugby Football Union (MRFU). Although Malta has yet to qualify for the Rugby World Cup, the island state has made remarkable progression since its first international in 2000.
Jarrod Sammut is a Maltese international rugby league footballer who last played as a stand-off or scrum-half for the Barrow Raiders in the BetFred Championship.
Rugby union in the Isle of Man is a popular sport. It has no national competitive side of its own, and is not affiliated to the IRB in its own right. For this reason, it has no IRB ranking.
Rugby union in Malta is a small but growing sport. The national senior men's team are ranked 46th by the World Rugby.
Sports in Malta include association football, basketball, athletics, rugby, tennis, cycling, and others.
London Irish Amateur Rugby Football Club, also known as London Irish Wild Geese, is an amateur English rugby union club based in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, who play their rugby in Regional 2 Thames– a league at tier 6 of the English rugby union system – following their relegation from London & South East Premier at the end of the 2019–20 season. They are the amateur team of former professional team London Irish and play at Hazelwood.
The Malta Rugby Union National Cup, better known as the Mediterranean Bank Cup, is a rugby union tournament which runs parallel to the Malta Rugby Union National Championship in Malta. It is sponsored by the Mediterranean Bank. The winner of the previous season plays the winner of the Cisk Lager League, play in the Ray Elliot Cup, which serves as a super cup.
The Turkey national rugby league team represents Turkey in international rugby league. The team played their first match in 2018.