Mrelashvili, Givi Georgievich

Givi Mrelashvili studied at the Moscow Engineering and Economics Institute and played basketball as part of the institute team of Moscow, but soon abandoned the game after one unsuccessful match. From a classmate, he learned about the existence of rugby, which took her friend Sergei Selikhovkin, one of the most promising rugby players of the USSR. Back in 1957, he was one of the spectators at the rugby match of the national teams of Czechoslovakia and Wales at the VI World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow.

In June 1959, Givi first came to rugby training, where he met the Soviet rugby coach Anatoly Sorokin and a group of young rugby players - Sergei Selikhovkin, Evgeny Antonov, the Nagorov brothers and the Grigoryants brothers. From October 1 to 5, 1959, the first post-war rugby tournament was held - the open championship of Moscow - at the initiative of the Petrel sports society. It was attended by the Bauman MVTU team (department of physical education, coach A. A. Sorokin), the MAI team (Mrelashvili played in it), the national teams of the Nikolaev Pedagogical Institute and the Voronezh Forestry Institute (created by the initiative of students from Romania who are there trained). The MVTU team won this tournament.

After the tournament, Mrelashvili turned to the chairman of the Kolmeurne society with a proposal to hold an all-Union seminar in Adler, but after unsuccessful negotiations he invited his like-minded and pugnoy pioneers in Georgia to Tbilisi, who were familiar with the game very well, Dzhemal Beradze, Nodar Kipiani, Otar Dogonadze, Gogi Kuparadze, Gia Tsurtsumiya, Gogi Tony and others. Mrelashvili and his people organized the headquarters of the rugby organization in Tbilisi on October 15, 1959 in his house on Klara Zetkin Street (now Tsinamdzgvrishvili ), opening the rugby section. Thanks to the help of the repatriate from France, Jacques Aspekyan, a rugby player and a cyclist, many rugby teams appeared in Tbilisi.

In June 1961, Givi Mrelashvili visited Leningrad, and after meeting with the sports leadership of Oblsovprof and the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Sporting Week of Leningrad N. Ya. Kiselyov agreed to hold a demonstration meeting on rugby. Then the article “How to play rugby?” By Givi Mrelashvili was published in the newspaper. Demonstration matches took place on October 7 and 8 at the stadium named after V.I. Lenin between the Moscow club "Trud" and the team "Khimki" in the presence of 10 thousand spectators. On December 1, 1961, Givi Mrelashvili became chairman of the Rugby Federation of the Georgian SSR by decision of the Tbilisi Sports Committee, and Jacques Aspekyan became deputy chairman ^[3] .

Continuing his rugby career, Givi Mrelashvili became a playing coach at the Gantiadi club, in which he played at the 1963 All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions and took the third place with the team ^[4] . In 1966, at the request of Mrelashvili, the first USSR rugby championship was held in Tbilisi; at the Mrelashvili tournament, as a playing coach, he played for the local Dynamo. The team took 2nd place, ahead of Moscow Dynamo, Kiev Spartak, Leningrad Spartak, Tbilisi Lokomotiv and losing only to the MVTU team ^[5] . In 1967, the first Georgian SSR rugby championship was held, in which Dynamo Tbilisi won, defeating all of its opponents in total with a crushing score of 167: 0.

After the completion of his playing career, Mrelashvili began to work as a coach - he was a coach of the Tbilisi clubs Dynamo, Gantiadi and Spartak, and then became the honored coach of the USSR and the judge of the All-Union category. At the Georgian Institute of Physical Education, he taught rugby since 1977 at the initiative of Gogi Kuparadze. He was awarded the Georgian Order of Honor for the development of rugby, becoming the first rugby player to be the holder of this award. He is vice president of the Rugby Veterans Union. Chairman of the Rugby Federation of the Georgian USSR in 1971-1973, member of the Presidium of the USSR Rugby Federation and the International Rugby Federation. Mentioned in Encyclopaedia Britannica as one of the founders of Soviet and Georgian rugby.

In October 1999, Givi Mrelashvili ran as a non-partisan member of the Georgian Parliament in the Chuguret constituency. In 2008, he opposed the plans of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to join NATO ^[6] .

• Arsen Yeremyan. Knights of the oval ball (Russian) // Russian club. - 2013. - October.
• Rugby // Great Soviet Encyclopedia . - 2012.
• Givi Mrelashvili. How to play rugby? (Russian) // "Sports Week of Leningrad". - 1961. - August 5 ( No. 31 (51) ).