Rugby union in Yugoslavia

For example, in 1988, an anonymous French rugby official joked that "one of the FIRA nightmares... is to have Yugoslavia playing Bulgaria refereed by a Soviet.

The former All Black scrum half Chris Laidlaw, writing at the end of the 1970s, saw rugby as a positive force in east-west relations at the time: Yugoslavia affiliated to the IRB in 1988,[4] and played in the 1988 World Cup qualification.

Slovenia In the early 1990s, former Italian cap, Dr Giancarlo Tizanini was a major driving force in Austrian rugby.

Before his death in 1994, he tried hard to establish a Central European equivalent of the Six Nations between Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia.

[5] Rugby union was a moderately popular sport in Yugoslavia (a name which Serbia retained long after the disintegration of that state).