April 23, 2023

2023 EUROPEAN FAIR PLAY MOVEMENT “SPIRIT OF FAIR PLAY” Award GOES to ASSOCIATION “SHARING RUGBY“ (POR)

The Association “Sharing Rugby, Association for the Promotion of the Practice of Rugby in
Prisons” (Associação “Rugby com Partilha”) aims to promote and provide the regular practice of
rugby in prisons, in its various variants, through voluntary work, in order to contribute to
training, education and social reintegration through the sport of inmates and ex-inmates,
promoting their social integration through sports clubs / associations practicing rugby.
With the first training held on march 15, 2015, this project started formally in 2016 resulting
from the collaboration protocol signed between the General Directorate of Reinsertion and Prison
Services and the Associação “Rugby com Partilha”. Currently counts with the support (on a
voluntary work basis) of corrent and former rugby players, from the national team (“Lobos”) and
from portuguese top rugby clubs (Belenenses, Direito, Cascais, CDUP, CDUL, etc.), club coachs
and the Portuguese Rugby Federation and involvs more than 150 men and women prisioners of 8
different prisons all over the country: Lisboa, Linhó/Sintra, Vale de Judeus/Setúbal, Évora,
Leiria, Santa Cruz do Bispo/Porto, Tires/Cascais and Montijo/Setúbal.
Rugby is a contact sport based on very strong values such as respect for the opponent, teamwork,
discipline, sportsmanship or enjoyment, so with-it prisoners/players learn to have greater selfcontrol, respect for rules and emotional imbalance, which is fundamental in their relationship
with each other and with the guards. It is important in internalizing some principles and in the
ability to deal with the opponent (adversary), and, with the inherent rules, it helps them to model
behaviors inside, hoping that they will be transferred outside. The objective is not so much to
occupy free time, which is important, it is not so much health, which is also important, but it is
mainly working for reintegration, providing prisoners/players with tools to be successful when
they get out of prison and rugby has that extraordinary potential.
This project is growing and evolving and it has already a second level of intervention. Associação
“Rugby com Partilha” has a collaboration protocol signed with Centro de Desporto da
Universidade do Porto (Oporto University Sports Centre or CDUP) under which the prisoners’ of
the EP of Santa Cruz do Bispo children can play in the youngster teams and help
prisoners/players to find a club where they can keep playing after they leave prison: “To know
that there are prisoners that seek to continue playing rugby is a mixture of joy and gratitude,
because with the support of Associação “Rugby com Partilha” we managed to provide them tools
that they will not abandon. This is a form of reinsertion, having something out there to hold on
to”, stresses the director of Vale de Judeus/Setúbal (high security level prison).
The more recent steep is the matches between different prisons, where the team from one prison
goes to other prison to play a match with the “home” team.