The Ivory Coast national rugby union team, nicknamed Les Éléphants, represents Côte d'Ivoire (also known as Ivory Coast) in rugby union. The team is recognised as Ivory Coast by the International Rugby Board. Ivory Coast participate in the annual Africa Cup and are considered a third tier rugby team.
Formed in 1990, the team's most significant achievement to date was their success in qualifying for the Rugby World Cup for their first and so far only time in 1995. They have not qualified since, though they did reach the semi-finals of the African qualifying competition for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, achieving a home draw against eventual qualifiers Namibia before being defeated in their away match.
Rugby union in Côte d'Ivoire is popular among school children, but the rugby union playing population in Côte d'Ivoire is still relatively small with only 14 clubs and 470 registered senior players.
Read more about Ivory Coast National Rugby Union Team: History, Results Summary, World Cup Record, Current Squad
Famous quotes containing the words ivory, coast, national, union and/or team:
“It’s wonderful how I jog
on four-honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.”
—Philip Levine (b. 1928)
“Forced from home, and all its pleasures,
Afric’s coast I left forlorn;
To increase a stranger’s treasures,
O’er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though theirs they have enroll’d me,
Minds are never to be sold.”
—William Cowper (1731–1800)
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“The union of hands and hearts.”
—Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667)
“I doubt if men ever made a trade of heroism. In the days of Achilles, even, they delighted in big barns, and perchance in pressed hay, and he who possessed the most valuable team was the best fellow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)