Albuquerque, NM – The University of New Mexico Men’s Rugby Football Club (UNM) will host the Indigenous Australian Invitational Rugby (IAIR) U20 team for a first ever match between both teams on November 9th, 2015 at 6:00pm. The match will take place on UNM’s Johnson Field in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The match is the first stop on the IAIR team’s inaugural 2-week trip to the USA and is a historical event for the Indigenous communities of Australia, the State of New Mexico and UNM. Beyond the rugby match the IAIR team and program seek to build strong ties to Native American communities in the USA and foster future cultural exchanges and events between its programs and players and their counterparts in the USA.

After Albuquerque the IAIR team will travel to Gallup, New Mexico on November 10th for a match against the USA Native American All-Star Rugby team. Additionally the 30 young men on the IAIR team will travel to Utah, Arizona and California to play other club and college teams. Their tour will involve staying on a reservation in New Mexico and exchanging cultural ideas with their Native American brothers and sisters. The team will also attend an educational seminar conducted by Long Beach University’s American Indian Studies center as well as host youth rugby clinics in southern California.

The IAIR mentors young men aged between 17-20 to assure that they transition from high school to work and study while balancing their rugby commitments. The 17-20 age group is an at risk group that tend to drop out of rugby due to the difficulty of managing their new commitments. IAIR works to assist these young men in finding jobs, housing, grants and scholarships and rugby clubs to play with (especially important for those that have only ever played for their school).