Wolves to Compete at Bingham Cup

The Ottawa Wolves will be competing at the 2012 Bingham Cup hosted by the Village Spartans RUFC in Manchester, United Kingdom between the 1st and 3rd of June. The Bingham Cup is the world championship of gay and inclusive rugby teams and is one of the largest men’s 15-aside rugby union tournaments in the sporting calendar outside of the IRB Rugby World Cup. Manchester 2012 will be the sixth Bingham Cup and is officially sponsored by the Rugby Football Union (RFU) and the International Gay Rugby Association and Board (IGRAB).

The tournament was named after Mark Bingham, a former University of California, Berkeley rugby star who had played for the San Francisco Fog and co-founded the Gotham Knights. Bingham died in the September 11, 2001 attacks on board United Airlines Flight 93. According to Jon Barrett of The Advocate, he is generally accepted to be one of a group of passengers who fought with the hijackers aboard the flight, which eventually led to the hijackers crashing the plane into a vacant field in Pennsylvania instead of targets in Washington, D.C.. At the time of his death, there were around eight gay-inclusive rugby clubs worldwide, and he was helping to create others.

This will be the Wolves second Bingham Cup having attended the tournament in Minneapolis, MN in 2010. As one of only two Canadian teams, the club hopes to best their last showing when they advanced to the Bingham Spoon final but were defeated by the Seattle Quake.

Click here for information on the 2012 tournament draw and fixtures.