ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at rugby union in Lebanon, a country in the global south. The sport is in the initial stages obtaining internal and external recognition. On the domestic level, rugby union and rugby league (which started in Lebanon seven years earlier than union) compete for the same pool of players. So far, the national rugby league team has been quite successful and even advanced to the quarterfinal of the 2017 World Cup with a team mainly comprised of Australian-Lebanese diaspora players. Externally, the Lebanese Rugby Union Federation (LRUF) is still in the process of applying to become a full member of World Rugby. The federation’s lack of women players has been an obstacle to its recognition in the past, but recently some progress has been made regarding female participation. While the national men’s teams do partly rely on diaspora participation, the sport is also growing domestically, particularly in the private secondary schools.
