Turks and Caicos Islands Rugby Football Union| TCIRFU |
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| Sport | Rugby union |
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| Founded | 2001 (2001) |
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| NACRA affiliation | 2011 (Associate Member) |
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| President | Keith Burant |
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| Website | www.rugby.tc |
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The Turks and Caicos Islands Rugby Football Union, or TCIRFU, is the body managing rugby union in the Turks and Caicos Islands. The TCIRFU has its head office and grounds on Providenciales, where Turks and Caicos rugby union international matches are played. In addition the Union also trains on Grace Bay beach on Providenciales.
In August 2011, the TCIRFU was admitted as an associate member of NACRA, which is the governing body for rugby union in North America and the Caribbean. [1]
The TCIRFU is made up of Turks and Caicos Islanders as well as expatriate residents from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The TCIRFU competes at fifteen- and seven-a-side rugby union.
Competition
The Turks and Caicos national team, the Flamingos, plays representative matches against the Bahamas as well as competing against touring club sides from the United States and passing British Warships.
The TCIRFU has also sent teams to compete in the Trinidad Sevens, Bahamas Sevens, Cayman Sevens, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and the Canada-American Rugby Tournament at Saranac Lake, New York.
The TCIRFU also hosts the annual Governors Cup Beach Rugby Championship.
The Turks and Caicos Islands are a British Overseas Territory consisting of the larger Caicos Islands and smaller Turks Islands, two groups of tropical islands in the Lucayan Archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean and northern West Indies. They are known primarily for tourism and as an offshore financial centre. The resident population was 31,458 in 2012, of whom 23,769 lived on Providenciales in the Caicos Islands; July 2021 estimates put the population at 57,196. It is the third largest of the British overseas territories by population.
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The Inter-American Division of Seventh-day Adventists is a sub-entity of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, which oversees the Church's work in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and Northern South America.
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The Caribbean is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands and the surrounding coasts. The region is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and the North American mainland, east of Central America, and north of South America islets, reefs and cays. Island arcs delineate the eastern and northern edges of the Caribbean Sea: The Greater Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago on the north and the Lesser Antilles and the on the south and east. They form the West Indies with the nearby Lucayan Archipelago, which are considered to be part of the Caribbean despite not bordering the Caribbean Sea. On the mainland, Belize, Nicaragua, the Caribbean region of Colombia, Cozumel, the Yucatán Peninsula, Margarita Island, and the Guianas are often included due to their political and cultural ties with the region.
Rugby union in the Turks and Caicos Islands is a minor, but growing sport.
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The 2013 NACRA Rugby Championship is a rugby union championship for Tier 3 North American and Caribbean teams, and took place between January and June, 2013.
The 2013 NACRA Women's Sevens was the ninth tournament of the North America and Caribbean Women's Sevens Championship, the official rugby sevens continental championships organized by NACRA. Both the women's and men's competitions were held at the George Town which was in the Cayman Islands. It was held on 9–10 November. The stadium was the Truman Bodden Stadium as it was also a qualification tournament for the Central America and Caribbean Games which would be held in Mexico.
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The Dominican Rugby Federation, known as Fedorugby — or officially in Spanish: Federación Dominicana de Rugby, is the governing body for rugby union in the Dominican Republic. It was founded on 20 October 2004 and became affiliated to the North America Caribbean Rugby Association (NACRA) in the following year.
The Turks & Caicos Islands national rugby union team represents the Turks and Caicos Islands in rugby union. Although not an official member of World Rugby; they have been competing in the NACRA Rugby Championship since 2013 and are affiliated with NACRA.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a major Christian denomination with a small presence in Turks and Caicos Islands with a reported 3,864 members as of June 30, 2020.
