The guilded ANTIM CUP

Wed, 3 April, 2002

Rugby Supporters' League of Georgia (RML) will donate
the Antim Cup to the GEO and ROM Unions, and unveil it
at the Official pre-match function to be held on Friday,
5th April, at 14 hrs

** RULES

The Antim Cup should be contested every time Georgia
and Romania meet in senior international match BUT not
at Rugby World Cup Finals and Qualifiers.

The holder retains the Cup unless the challenger wins
the match (no extra time whatsoever).

The holder keeps the Cup between matches and brings it
to the ground for the next game.

The team, which wins the first match played after
unveiling of the Cup, will become its first holder.

If this first match ends in a draw, then the Cup
belongs to the team which has scored last in that
match by any means (try, con, pen, dropgoal) and thus
squared the score.

In an exteremely hypothetical event of a series of
initial matches all ending in scoreless draws, the
home team retains the Cup (NOT as holder) and brings
it with them to the next match until the deadlock has
been broken.

** How the idea came to fruition

There was a motion from Georgia RU two year ago, just
before ENC 2000 decider in Tbilissi, to establish a
Challenge Cup, a la Calcutta and Bledisloe Cups, which
would be played for annually by Oaks and Lelos

Georgian rugby folks have weighted up options and
decided that the Cup should be named after whom else
but reverend Antimoz Iverieli = Antim Ivirianu (c 1650
- 1716)

He introduced Romanian language into liturgy, built a
couple of monasteries in Bucuresti and even became
arch-bishop of Muntenia (historical region in Southern
Romania)

Actually, Antim was Georgian by origin. He was
abducted by Ottomans in his childhood and sold as
slave but then ransomed by Partiarch of Jerusalem

Albeit a great patriot of his adopting country
Romania, Antim always kept tight links with Georgia
(Iveria) and even founded in Tbilissi, his homeland's
Capital, first print-house where the first printed
Bible was produced in Georgian

Both Romanian and Georgian Churches regard Antim as
saint, and these days the Georgia - Romania Friendship
Society was also named after him

Last year through influential go-betweens Rugby
Supporters' League (RML) of Georgia approached on the
Antim Cup issue the Patriarch of Georgian Orthodox
Church, ILIA THE 2ND and got His Holyness's blessing
and full support

This spring famous Georgian sculptor, himself a great
rugby player of yesteryear, Guia Japaridze cast the
Cup in guilded bronze and the RML will unveil it on 
Friday, 5th April, in good time for the inaugural 
challenge

END )))