World Police & Fire Games 2023
The World Police & Fire Games (WPFG) is kind of self-explanatory, it's an Olympic style competition every two years with only slightly fewer competitors than the actual Summer Olympics and is considered the third largest athlete attendance event in the world.
Fun fact - whilst this year's games were hosted by Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada, the UK actually hosted the Olympics in 2012, the WPFG in 2013 and the Commonwealth Games in 2014 - the top three competitor events in the World.
The "GAMES" as you can appreciate cover a multitude of sports (just like the Olympics) but in rugby, and more specifically rugby 7s, fourteen countries from across the globe took part in Winnipeg.
CEO and Founder of TRF, Phil Klevorick, who is former Royal Canadian Mounted Police, attended this event again, his 6th WPFG since he first attended in Calgary in 1997. Under our Salute to Service banner, supporting those who are or have served in the armed or emergency services anywhere in the world, he worked alongside Scott Harland (Regional Training Manager for Rugby Americas North) to help support and train the referee team
Phil said "The Rugby Foundation 100% supports these games through our S2S initiative and we are looking to really expand our support in 2025 when the Games will be held in Birmingham, Alabama in late June." "TRF will help provide the cadre of match officials that the Games will need and we will include active or retired police and fire officials with support of the local referee society and specialist officials from other groups around the world."
Although this year's participation was down slightly on previous years (largely down to the after effects of the pandemic, the organisers are confident of a bigger roster for the 2025 WPFG event in Birmingham, Alabama which of course will be supported by TRF once again.
If you are a match official who is serving or has served in a law enforcement or fire service anywhere around the world and would like to take part, please message us using the link below.
