Fahmy Jalil Explains The State of Malaysian Rugby and Their Goals

Fahmy Jalil is the Secretary General of Malaysia Rugby, and he has a long history of being involved in rugby. He told us about the Union’s structures, challenges, growth opportunities and their goals in 7s and XV Rugby.

Fahmy Jalil started playing rugby when he was at Alam Shah Secondary School as a five-year-old and stopped playing in 2005 when he thought he would be too small to go and play on the bigger international stage. 

His late father had owned a rugby club since 1984 called NS Wanderers RC, and Fahmy stepped in to help with the Malaysian club in a management capacity between 2005 and 2013. The club is based in the city of Seremban in the state of Negeri Sembilan and has competed in the previous MRU Super League, the top level of the Malaysian rugby union league system. 

NS Wanderers RC – Fahmy Jalil’s club

Jalil found himself involved in the national Malaysian Rugby 7s team as a team manager for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and also the Asia Games 2014 in Incheon, as well as the Asia Rugby Sevens Series. He stepped up into the Vice President role of Malaysia Rugby in 2019 and, in 2023, was appointed as Secretary General of Malaysia Rugby.

“I was competition director for Malaysia Rugby from 2016 until late in 2024 – almost eight years. I’ve been elected as an EXCO member of Asia Rugby, too, and I’m in my second tenure as an EXCO member. My role now in Malaysia is to facilitate all the programs and help to grow rugby in Malaysia,” said Fahmy Jalil.

Malaysia has a long, rich history of rugby – they have been a World Rugby member since the late 80s, are one of the founding members of Asia Rugby, and Rugby 10s was founded in Malaysia and COBRA, so a lot of history. It’s also made up of a complex ecosystem of states and member unions.

“We have 18 affiliates in Malaysia Rugby. We are the governing body which controls rugby, but not touch rugby, and we are under Asia Rugby and World Rugby as a full member. Our 18 affiliates include the Police and the Army and the 16 states in Malaysia. 

We have a few tournaments that we host, such as the Agong Cup, and then we have a national Sevens Seniors and Under 18 Boys and Girls (July 2026 with 16 teams each from the States). We have the national Sevens tournament in November, most probably in Kuala Lumpur, with 54 teams playing in four categories: Men’s Open, Women’s Open, Men’s & Women’s U20. 

On top of that, we have the Sukma Malaysian Sports Games (for U21s), which will be held on August 21-23, 2026, in Kuala Lumpur. (The Sukma Games is a biennial multi-sport event featuring young athletes from the country’s 13 states, 3 federal territories, and Brunei). That will see 14 men’s teams and 12 women’s teams for Sevens – basically, our Sevens is huge. You can see a seven-a-side tournament every week, either in the village or in the states, or at a provincial or club level; they will be having a tournament every week, except for Ramadan. 

As a governing body, we work with our affiliates; every tournament needs to be sanctioned, so they need to go through the states, which forward the applications to Malaysia Rugby to get sanctioned, which includes following our SOP, such as player welfare, match officials and insurance as well. 

Once they are sanctioned by Malaysia Rugby, they can even apply for a grant from our government to host – the government wants to help to grow the game.”

We think Malaysia has one of the healthiest rugby calendars, and if people had to look at the sheer number of tournaments going on, it’s incredible. With the geography of the country, the size of the country population-wise, it is difficult to pull all those partners together to have one unified vision of how you’re going to grow the sport and how you’re going to achieve success at a national team level.

SEA 7s Singapore 2025 – Malaysia vs Singapore Women (thatparticularshot)

“It’s very tough, and the increasing costs of flights make it a challenge. We discuss how we can help – to be honest, 80% of the tournaments in Malaysia happen in East Malaysia. West Malaysia is too big. As a governing body, we see what we can offer. For the upcoming under-18 national Sevens, we give some grants to help teams fly into East Malaysia so we can help reduce the costs and enable them to come and participate in the tournament in Kuala Lumpur.”

Those logistical and financial challenges are very tough; not only in Malaysia, but we think there are a few countries in Asia that suffer from that because of the size. In Malaysia, there is a huge amount of pride in the state and the country.

“That’s the unique side of Malaysia – they play hard between states when they’re facing each other, especially in the Agong Cup, but they have pride in playing for Malaysia. I think that is the Malaysian attitude; they are very proud to represent Malaysia, no matter if they are from East, West, North, or South of Malaysia. When they are combined in Malaysia, they are proud to play as one. 

Everyone can play for Malaysia. It’s not like (for example) if you are a champion from Selangor, and then only Selangor players assemble for Malaysia. We don’t do that. We have a panel that selects the players, and then we have the panel of coaches as well. We have a procedure for the player selections to represent Malaysia, which involves everyone in Malaysia.”

National Strategic Partnership – Malaysia Rugby

We asked the Malaysia Rugby Hon Secretary General to explain the relationship with the National Sports Council, and the support and funding, as well as the National Rugby Development Program, the NRDP, which Malaysia Rugby has recently regained ownership of.

“The National Sports Council has something like 56 sports under it, and they have a fourth tier, which is the RTG “Road to Gold” for the Olympics, and then they have a full-time and part-time development partner.

Malaysia Rugby falls under part-time, and we have another program we call NRDP (National Rugby Development Program). The National Sports Council is just like the Ministry of Sports (we call it MSN, Majlis Sukan Negara). The NSC facilitates the funds to all the sports associations and assesses how much, what the plans and programs are and what the goals and objectives are. They want to know the sports vision and mission.

For us, if I start with Rugby Sevens, we have support from the National Sports Council for the Men and Women for our preparations towards the Asian Games this October in Nagoya. We still need to pay our own flights and all accommodation, but they give us some allowance for us to train part-time towards the Asian Games until December 2026. 

Part-time is 14 days for us to have training camps at their expense, but for the rest, we need to pay ourselves.

We are also involved in the Asia Rugby Emirates Sevens Series, two legs in China and in Sri Lanka – both the Bunga Raya Men’s and Women’s 7s teams, which now fall under the NRDP.

I pray that they will allow us to be full-time for the preparations for the SEA Games next year in September, which are hosted in Kuala Lumpur,” explained Fahmy Jalil.

Photo Credit – thatparticularshot – Malaysia Men’s 7s

He explained, “The NRDP started in 2017, before COVID in 2021. In that period, it fell under Malaysia Rugby, and the objective was to have a development Malaysia team operate in a high-performance environment – that’s why we were champions in the region for U18s.

The NSC took over after COVID, and we were a stakeholder and offered advice on what to do, but they developed their own criteria, and they changed the objective to develop more people and have more players play rugby in Malaysia. I think we have had something like 10,000-12,000 students playing rugby for the past five years.

Now this year, the focus has shifted back to high performance for development, and we need to reach the semifinals or podium in the U18s – that is our main goal for the NRDP this year, which is now back under Malaysia Rugby.

We are working with our 16 affiliates to develop rugby in the States, and the best players from the States will represent Malaysia when we have our National Sevens this July, and to participate in September (scheduled for 12-13 September) in China, with the venue to be confirmed by Asia Rugby.

We also have our MSSM, Malaysia Sports School, XVs games now in Ipoh and then the schools switch back to 7s in preparation for the National 7s and the Sukma Malaysian Sports Games, which takes place in Selangor this year, and in 2028 it takes place in Kelantan, East Malaysia.”

Why SEA Games Rugby Sevens Are So Important – Fahmy Jalil

We have attended the SEA Games since 2017 in Malaysia, and Malaysia, as he mentioned, will host the next edition in 2027. It is a high-profile event for the unions because there’s funding involved and obviously prestige, and the teams are very competitive.

In the most recent edition in late 2025, Thailand won gold for the Women and Men in Bangkok, and the Malaysian women won silver, while the men just missed out on the medal and were fourth.

Since then, running alongside the HSBC Singapore SVNS, the SEA 7s took place, which the Malaysian men won, and the women again lost out to Thailand in the final.

SEA Games 2025 Bangkok – Malaysia vs Indonesia Women 7s (thatparticularshot)

So what are the goals for hosting the SEA Games, and how optimistic is he of the women’s and men’s teams getting medals at home?

“Nothing less than gold will do because our NSC don’t care if we win the World Cup Sevens or win the Asia Rugby Sevens Series – the SEA Games is the main objective. I think this will be agreed on by all of the SEA union members, including Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, etc. You need to get gold during the SEA Games. 

On the one hand, the government wants us to go for gold at the SEA Games, but from a Malaysia Rugby perspective, we want to grow and maybe reach the World Cup or Olympics. If you talk about Sevens. I think there’s a future for us to go somewhere, but because the funding comes from the NSC, we need to work with them on the goals they set out.

We are developing our U18s for that reason, and we have a continuous plan for the players for the Sevens squad, especially in 2027.

The SEA Games should be held at the National Sports Stadium, and we are hoping that we can cater for 25-30,000 people because it happened in 2017. I think we will easily get 20,000 with the hype that we can grow, which will be amazing.”

Malaysian XVs Rugby

2026 saw the inaugural SEA Women’s Championship XVs 2026 take place in Kuala Lumpur, and the Malaysian Women’s XV were crowned champions after drawing with Singapore and defeating the Philippines.

The Men’s team have dropped out of the top tier in Asian Rugby but is due to compete in the Union Cup in Thailand for the first time in July 2026.

We asked him to explain what the goals for Fifteens rugby are.

Photo Credit – Malaysia Rugby Union

“The Malaysian Men have played in the top flight in Asia since 2018; for seven years continuously until we lost to Sri Lanka in 2025 and dropped out, but we struggled, and in that time we spent almost 1 million US dollars – let’s say 250,000 US dollars on travel, team preparations, hosting, etc

We had some tough conversations among our EXCO, and we don’t have the size or naturalised players like in Japan or Hong Kong, where rugby is also professional. 

But with the 15s in Southeast Asia, this is the third year for the Unions Cup. We already missed two years because of our involvement in the AREMC (Asia Rugby Emirates Men’s Championship), but we will play this year, and the focus is not so much on the 15s format, but we need to keep participating.

We are higher ranked than the other teams, so we will do our best to be champions for the first time in the Unions Cup, and also in Division One for Asia Rugby, but we don’t want to go back to the top level. We cannot stop playing fifteen-a-side rugby in Malaysia, because everyone is playing fifteen-a-side.”

Photo Credit: KRU – South Korea vs Malaysia ARMC 2023

For the Women’s XV, we had Malaysian players tell us at the tournament they won that they would like to reach the top tier in Asia and have pathways to reach a Rugby World Cup.

It seems Malaysia Rugby believes the gap between Hong Kong China, Kazakhstan, and Japan and the chasing pack of Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Indonesia, plus maybe the likes of Lebanon or Iran, UAE, and India, is still too big.

They will look to play in the Asia Rugby Division 1 this year if it goes ahead, with the understanding that the winner won’t qualify for the AREWC. The teams that are likely to contest the division are Malaysia, India, the UAE, and Uzbekistan.

Asian Rugby News 2026

• Asian International Rugby Tournaments 2026.
• Japan Sakura Fifteen Tests Against Ireland for WXV Global Series 2026 Announced.
• JRFU Raises Concerns About Asia Rugby Leadership.
• WXV Global Series Challenger 2026.