Birth name | Michael Robrigado Letts | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Date of birth | 15 February 1983 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Place of birth | Sydney, Australia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Height | 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Weight | 90 kg (200 lb; 14 st) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rugby union career | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Michael Robrigado Letts (born 15 February 1985) [1] is an Australian – Filipino rugby union player and is the captain of the Philippines national rugby union team. [2]
He was born in Sydney, Australia to an Australian father and a Filipina mother who hails from Bicol. [3]
Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union or more often just rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in England in the first half of the 19th century. Rugby is simply based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game is played between two teams of 15 players each, using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field called a pitch. The field has H-shaped goalposts at both ends.
Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby XIII in non-Anglophone Europe and South America, and referred to colloquially as rugby, football, footy or league in its heartlands, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 m (74 yd) wide and 112–122 m (122–133 yd) long with H-shaped posts at both ends. It is one of the two major codes of rugby football, the other being rugby union. It originated in 1895 in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England, as the result of a split from the Rugby Football Union (RFU) over the issue of payments to players. The rules of the game governed by the new Northern Rugby Football Union progressively changed from those of the RFU with the specific aim of producing a faster and more entertaining game to appeal to spectators, on whose income the new organisation and its members depended.
Craig Wing, also known by the nickname of "Wingy", is an Australian-born former professional rugby league and rugby union footballer. He began his career in rugby league, playing for the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Sydney Roosters in the NRL, representing Australia internationally and New South Wales in State of Origin. He switched to rugby union, playing in Japan for the NTT Communications Shining Arcs and the Kobelco Steelers, earning selection for the Japanese national team after completing three years residency.
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Oliver Saunders is an Australian–Filipino rugby union footballer for the Philippines national rugby union team where his position is at fly half. Saunders is a former professional rugby league footballer with Norths in the Jersey Flegg Cup. He is one of the leading try-scores in the Philippines team. Oliver is brothers with fellow Philippines players Matt Saunders and Benjamin Saunders. In 2011, he and his brother Matt signed to the NTT Communications Shining Arcs for the 2012/2013 season of the Japanese Top League competition.
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Rugby union in the Philippines is a minor but growing sport.
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