Alongside a busy highway in Buenos Aires, this amateur team of rugby players show all the professionalism of their sporting heroes.

They are the “Botines Solidarios”, meaning ‘solidarity through boots’.

The players come from one of the worst shanty towns in South America, known as Villa 31, and rugby has brought them a new sense of pride.

In Argentina, home of football greats like Maradona, rugby comes distant second to the nation’s passion for football.

Footballers like Diego Maradona and Carlos Tevez both came from the city’s poorer areas before becoming global household names, giving hope to poor young Argentinians everywhere.

But Argentina also has a national rugby team to be proud of.

The national team, nicknamed “The Pumas”, came third in the last Rugby World Cup held in France in 2007, beating the hosts as South Africa triumphed over England in the finals.

The Botines team and foundation is the brain child of Ignacio Corleto, a former full back for the Argentine national team and long serving player with European top tier club side Stade Francais.

Just four years ago, in the 2007 World Cup, Corleto’s rugby career reached its zenith, as he played an instrumental part in Argentina’s rip-roaring march to the semi finals of the tournament.

Following a famed third place winning try against home team France, the full back decided to hang up his boots on a ten year professional career and return to his native Argentina.

As a growing social divide continues to develop in Argentina, Buenos Aires’s mushrooming shanty towns surface beside railroad tracks, appear under bridges and surround the city dumps.

According to the results of the 2010 official national census 163,000 people live in the shanty towns of Buenos Aires.

For the some forty thousand dwellers of Villa 31, sport has long been seen as a good alternative to a life of poverty or crime.

When Corleto started Botines Solidarios in mid-2010 many of its now key players had not even heard of the sport, long considered to be the game of choice for the privileged classes.

Today the group, made up of almost 30 members between the ages of 13 to 19, are just finishing their first full season training together and preparing for a tour of friendly games.

Twice a week since the project began, the team’s own bus has been relaying the players from their homes and the training ground.

Santiago Gourdy is another of Botines coaches. He says that while people were initially wary of adopting the sport it’s now being embraced with open arms and every day they are drawing in new players.

The Botines Foundation set up by Ignacio Corleto aims to grow the team and potentially take the project to other neighbourhoods.

The former Puma funds the project drawing on his own commercial earnings and by using his sporting fame to entice sponsors.

He’s also a driving force behind the team on the training pitch.

The project not only aims to build better athletes but also more rounded individuals by encouraging them to take into their daily life the codes that the sport is associated with.

Now the players of Botines Solidarios want to reach out to other rugby teams and hoping in 2012 to participate in a citywide league.

They are already breaking down social barriers as they train with squads from all across the capital. They have also hosted visits from youth teams from South Africa, New Zealand and the UK.

As a mark of the team’s success one of the last training sessions the Argentine rugby squad held before flying to the world cup in New Zealand was with the Botines in their grounds.

Team captain Felipe Contepomi and his full squad ran drills with the young team.

As the domestic rugby season in Argentina comes to an end the Botines have also just began a tour of friendly games.

Botines Solidarios could promise a better future for these young men – and also, possibly, for the future of rugby in Argentina.

For the Argentine national team hoping to find glory in New Zealand, a whole new breed of Puma might soon be waiting in the wings fighting for their position in the future team.

Broadcast and Published by AP September 9th, 2011

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