Hideomi Ryu played a central role in getting his native city of Kumamoto elected to host games for the 2019 Rugby World Cup, even when naysayers thought it was no more than a pipedream in a community dominated by baseball.The 75-year-old chairman of the Kumamoto Rugby Union had worked tirelessly to spread the game in Japan's southwestern prefecture for years. Even so, he knew the odds were against a city with such a small rugby population hosting games for the World Cup."To tell the truth, I was not confident we'd be elected as a host city, with only about 1,500 rugby players in the prefect…READ FULL ARTICLE
