sport news Doncaster flanker Martin Sigren on Chile's remarkable qualification for this ... trends now
In the dark depths of a Yorkshire winter, Martin Sigren is putting in the groundwork for his days in the sun at the World Cup, as a trailblazer for Chile with his historic feats — and choice of body art.
By the time the Doncaster flanker, 26, leads the emerging South American nation into battle against England in Lille in September, his hope is that all his team-mates will proudly wear an ink symbol of their success. After Los Condores of Chile upset the USA in Glendale, Colorado, last summer to qualify for the World Cup for the first time, their captain knew how he would mark the occasion.
‘The tattoo and badge match,’ he tells Sportsmail. ‘It was my celebration. The condor is our national bird, it’s the biggest bird in the Andes region. It has a huge wingspan, three metres, and it flies up to 4,000 metres, in the mountains. It’s our team’s name, so it means everything about this transformation I have made personally, to be in this place. Some of the boys have had it too. I hope they all get it.’
Chile's Martin Sigren celebrated Chile's World Cup qualification by getting a condor Tattoo
Chile’s Condors are truly soaring. Turning the oval-ball balance of power in the Americas upside-down cannot be overstated. Just three years after the first step towards small-scale professionalism with the development of a high-performance centre, Pablo Lemoine’s committed band of brothers had beaten World Cup stalwarts Canada and the USA to earn their place at the tournament in France.
In rugby’s corridors of power, there is a desperate desire to unlock a potentially lucrative market in the States, but Sigren felt Chile simply had more passion than their northern rivals as they clawed back a 19-0 second-leg deficit to win 52-51 on aggregate.
‘We believed it was our main weapon over the US — having this huge purpose,’ he says. ‘We worked on understanding, “Why are we doing this? Who am I representing?” It was the same for the games against Canada and for all of the qualifying. We created this collective purpose and that is what got us where we are. In this game with so much pressure it was about who wanted it. What we showed was that we wanted it more than they did.’
Former Uruguay prop Lemoine assembled a squad who bought into an ambitious crusade and Sigren set the tone in giving body and soul to the cause, for very little personal gain initially.
The South American side booked teir place at the World Cup for the first time with play-off win over USA
‘It took a huge sacrifice to get where we are,’ he says. ‘It was tough. It was not until 2021 that we were getting paid at all. We don’t get paid even close to enough to be able to live with.
‘In 2019, 2020 we did everything on a fully amateur basis — just our passion, training from
