After a lot of cracking action, and an out-of-character hilariously one-sided final, the inaugural Rugby Premier League is done. From following the action closely, and talking to those involved, here’s what we learned from the last fortnight:
The world’s best bring their A-game, India’s best step up
In July 2024, Joseva Talacolo was screaming over the line at the Stade de France to score a try for eventual silver medalists Fiji to open the scoring in the final of the rugby sevens competition at the Paris Olympics. Fast forward to June 2025, and he was doing much the same thing… except it’s at the Andheri Sports Complex and it is to put the Chennai Bulls 10-0 up in the final of the first season of the Rugby Premier League.
That is the level of athlete that Mumbai witnessed over the past fortnight. Three of the top five try scorers in that Olympics were present at the RPL (Perry Baker, Joji Nosova, Matias Osadzcuk) as were three of the top five conversion scorers (Iowane Teba, Joquin Pellandini, Akuila Rokolisoa).
It wasn’t just their names-on-paper, either. They showed just why they are some of the world’s best players. From first game to last try, the intensity rarely dipped. They went hard at each other: pummeling into tackles and putting in lung-bursting sprints, time and again, and pulling out some sensational skills to show a nation that’s slowly waking up to the sport, and just how exciting it can be.
What also helped was that the Indian support cast stepped up, big time. Javed Hussain, the highest Indian scorer (fourth overall) and adjudged the best Indian player of the tournament, says one of the best moments of his season came early, when his coach (and New Zealand sevens great) DJ Forbes told him that it was Javed who showed him that Indian players have the potential to compete at this level of rugby.
Javed had gone to the Hyderabad Heroes camp with a willingness to adjust for the team, play out of position, do whatever the coach asked… in the end, he ended up playing in the centre, the position he had told Forbes he was best at. That kind of trust was replicated across the league, where coaches who had come with open minds and kind thoughts, started trusting the Indian players to deliver when it mattered most.
For instance, only one dropkick was scored all season long, and that was by Delhi Redz and India fly-half, Deepak Punia. At a crucial time in their semifinal against the Bengaluru Bravehearts, Chennai Bull’s Shanawaz Ahmed scored his first try of the tournament after getting an offload from Talacolo. Javed was utterly irrepressible throughout the tournament.
As much as it was a learning experience of the highest order for the Indian players, it was also a rare chance to showcase just what they are capable of, and they did it. As Javed says, “what I learnt most was that we must be willing to take risks. To have the self-belief to do in a game what we Indians usually only try in training amongst ourselves.”
They did, and the RPL was an on-field success because of that.
So, the RPL was fun. What next?
The key for rugby’s future in India lies here. What the RPL has done is unprecedented, but it was — for all its merits — a month-long commitment. What about the 11 to go till the next one? As much as Rugby India slowly builds up the competition calendar for the sport in the country, the number of matches remain limited. There’s a (month-long) India camp in September and there are a couple of club competitions organized in Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata. A senior nationals (inter-state) happens once a year. Once every four years (or whenever the Sports Ministry deigns), the National Games rolls around. These competitions are a mix of the longform 15s and the sevens version of the game.
Javed, and Neeraj Khatri, and the athletes ESPN spoke to ahead of the tournament all commented on the pure intensity of the training they’d seen from pre-season till final. “That’s something we can learn from,” says Neeraj. “Just how focused [the world’s best] are, how they train at game pace, how they leave nothing out there.”
Now, they’ll all have to readjust to a slower pace of life. Javed says he’s already bored, missing the daily grind of the RPL. So is Neeraj, and they both will now have to switch back to the weekend-only training routine that is de rigueur for India rugby.
They will bring their learnings to this routine, up the intensity, work with clearer goals, but there’s a limit to how much of that will translate to performance when it matters. For that you need to play competitive matches.
This is a thought that had been stated already by coaches across the RPL. From Mike Friday (former USA sevens head coach) to Tomasi Cama jr. (All Blacks Sevens highest scorer) to RPL winner Ben Gollings (highest scorer in sevens history), the RPL coaches had all stressed to ESPN, ahead of the tournament, that there is simply no substitute for game time.
They all now hope for a longer league, more teams, more matches. It’s when that happens that India will take the next step — to competing for titles in Asia, qualifying for the World Series, taking part in the Olympics.
What season one of the RPL has done, though, is to give belief to the Indian players. That they are not that far off from the world’s best, that if given the conditions to succeed, they just might be able to. As Neeraj says, “We know now that we can [hold our own].” One big step taken, then.
Don’t forget the human face of the RPL
In all this talk about the future of rugby and World Series and Olympics, it’s easy to forget the human faces behind all this. Like Mohammed Jasim, son of a fisherman who has had to do daily wage work to make ends meet and keep up this passionate rugby dream of his. Like Sukumar Hembrom, who only picked up this sport because it was the only way to get out of his hostel, the only chance to eat some chocolates. Like Javed Hussain, who picked up the sport because the NGO that cleared the jungle behind his settlement offered him free Parle G biscuits (the Rs. 5 packs) and the more he played, the more he got: shoes, for the first time, t-shirts, new shorts.
Mumbai Dreamers’ Ganesh Majhi once quit rugby to go make some money in Chennai, he made Rs 3000 (“a sum I’d never seen before”) before being convinced back to the sport. Javed had quit the sport too, in the lockdown, to go work as a milk delivery agent, for Rs 1500 a month. These are amounts of money that many of us take for granted but can mean all the difference for someone else. It’s easy to brush all this aside. ‘Oh, so what if they come from an underprivileged background? Everyone struggles’, but it’s not some generic backstory. It means something.
The pure joy in Javed’s face when he spoke about rugby, how it had gotten him out of a juggi [makeshift home] in a settlement in Delhi and onto national television, sharing the spotlight with the best in the world… that’s the kind of thing that this whole ‘sports’ business does in a way few other things can.
And that’s why the RPL matters, why it’s important that Rugby India build on this momentum (as they plan to), and why season one ought to only be the beginning.
