The Bingham Cup 2018
The Bingham Cup is the LGBT rugby world championships. This year it’s scheduled to take place in Amsterdam from June 2-11. We have some information here for anyone planning to go, or for those curious about what inclusive rugby actually is.
A Dutch Affair
Bingham Cup Amsterdam 2018 promises to be the largest gay rugby event ever held. More than 66 gay and inclusive teams will take part from around the world. The Lowlanders are the host team and they’ve been working for over three years to make this dream come true.
Nashville, TN
The previous Bingham Cup was in Nashville, Tennessee back in 2016, and about 1500 sportspeople took part. Our Social Media Officer Joseph Kearney was there playing for The Lowlanders. He’s been a committed rugby fanatic ever since. This year he’ll be playing for The Thebans from Edinburgh and he’ll be tweeting updates from the heart of the games.
Bigger and Better
This 9th edition of the Bingham Cup comes to continental Europe for the first time. In all, more than 1,600 players will be in Amsterdam for a week-long program celebrating gay and inclusive rugby. The almost 200 tournament matches for the men’s and women’s 15 player rugby teams, will take place June 8-10 at the Amstelveense Rugby Club, home of the Amsterdam Lowlanders.
Rugby is my Pride
Respect, inclusion, sportsmanship, and camaraderie play an important role in rugby culture — a sport that welcomes all with open arms. In that spirit, Bingham Cup Amsterdam 2018 will include a women’s division for the first time. Rugby is my Pride, an international photo exhibition celebrating the inclusive spirit of rugby, will open on June 6 in Amsterdam’s gay street Reguliersdwarsstraat.
About Bingham Cup
The Mark Kendall Bingham Memorial Tournament, or Bingham Cup for short, is the world championship for LGBTQIA and 15 player inclusive rugby teams and takes place once every two years. The tournament is named in honor of Mark Bingham, a player for the San Francisco Fog who helped establish New York’s Gotham Knights. Mark died fighting back against the 9/11 hijackers of flight UA93. The Bingham Cup is organized under the auspices of International Gay Rugby (IGR), which is recognized as the representative LGBT organization by World Rugby, the world governing body for the sport of rugby union and rugby sevens. Previous Bingham Cups have been held in San Francisco (2002), London (2004), New York (2006), Dublin (2008), Minneapolis (2010), Manchester (2012), Sydney (2014) and Nashville (2016).
Meet The Teams
With 2000 potential players and up to 60 teams, that’s a whole lot of meat to meet. We’ve narrowed the field down to 9 teams from around the world and a selection of their players. We’ll be revealing our choice of Bingham Players early next week and you get to vote on your favorite. To give you a taster of what we mean, here’s a sneak peak at one of the players from the Berlin Bruisers.
Suggestions
If you have a favorite sport or if you want to write about your own team, let us know by sending your suggestions to social@planetromeo.com.
I always associate team sports like rugby with straight people.
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While we’re on the topic of sport, ever heard of the Gay Games?