USA sevens

Day 1 is over. Here are the highlights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ram5a6p8r4g

What a difference a week makes. England eliminated from the main comp following losses to Fiji and Portugal. Kenya were almost eliminated, but scored a late try against uruguay. Spain beat Australia and push Samoa. All good for the game.

In fact England were hammered by Scotland as well for 3 defeats.

England will play Australia in the Bowl Q/F ...... may scrape the Shield.
Wales play S Africa in QF of the Cup ..... not a good history good chance of the Plate.
Samoa play Scotland .... I imagine a loss to Wales in the SF of the plate.

All the draw is available at the IRB site. 2nd phase of the days play about to start. Not sure I like these 3 day comps I can not watch the finals tomorrow...Monday morning = work:(

rainbow-warrior wrote:In fact England were hammered by Scotland as well for 3 defeats.

England will play Australia in the Bowl Q/F ...... may scrape the Shield.
Wales play S Africa in QF of the Cup ..... not a good history good chance of the Plate.
Samoa play Scotland .... I imagine a loss to Wales in the SF of the plate.

All the draw is available at the IRB site. 2nd phase of the days play about to start. Not sure I like these 3 day comps I can not watch the finals tomorrow...Monday morning = work:(

I'm with you............

I think it's good for the 7's game and rugby in general. There's a lot more competitive and there are more upsets. Whilst I'm happy we made it through, it's only a matter of time before we end up in the bowl. Here are the pool results:

Pool A
Team Played Pts
FIJ 3 9
SCO 3 7
POR 3 5
ENG 3 3

This is pretty good pool. Obviously the England result is a shocker. But Portugal aren't bad (the were slightly ahead of Scotland in the sevens rankings going into the tournament).

Pool B
Team Played Pts
RSA 3 9
CAN 3 7
KEN 3 5
URU 3 3

Kenya's elimination is the shock. They where the beaten finalists last week and wee ranked no 2 coming into the tournament.

Pool C
Team Played Pts
NZL 3 9
WAL 3 7
ARG 3 5
FRA 3 3

Wales were the bottom ranked team coming into this tournament.

Pool D
Team Played Pts
SAM 3 9
USA 3 5
AUS 3 5
ESP 3 5

Another close pool. Australia eliminated. Both Spain and the USA haven't been mugs this year and were equal on points going into this tournament.

Thats the thing with the world 7's now you are seeded after every competition, I recall Portugal and Canada were the top 2 in one group not so long ago. Makes it good for the lower countries but also a little farcical. Next competition which is Honk Kong England will be seeded last.

It has been an odd 7's this year with some very strange results and teams expected to qualify for the cup all the time taking a dive. Just happy that Wales are doing enough to stay in the top 8 - 9 which is good and also avoids the play offs.

I agree. I think the issue for all the top teams is keeping up or ahead of the lower teams. At the moment the focus for the major IRB nations is 15's. The olympic status is already paying dividends for the minor countries. Additionally, we see our first non IRB international tournament this year. A tournament in the US where the winning team pots a over 1 million US. Not bad for a weekends work. I think it's going to really take off following 2016.

Olympics will be very strange as it will be a GB team and I imagine the team from Ireland will be an unknown quantity as they do not play in the 7's. They won't either unless they qualify to play. Team GB could be up there though goodness knows when they will play together.

The other thing about the side being GB is will they also call on their 15 sides? At some point the 15's AB's will play 7's before the Olympics but wheres the line draw with (assuming hes still coach) Tietjens in terms of including them.

If the non AB/ sxv players go strongly over the next 2 years do others have more right to plsy. Happened with the Commonwealth 7's where they called on the guns for it.

I'm not sure what impact GB will have. There are a couple of reasons that relate to opportunity.

To play sevens at the moment and give yourself a good chance you want to be on the world series. There are 16 teams with a relation promotion system. Ireland doesn't have a team and can't get automatic entry. Even if a NI player could represent the UK they are very unlikely to get the opportunity. I think there is a reasonable chance Scotland in particular will struggle to maintain their position in the competition. I think there is a good chance they'll be in the relegation zone (bottom 4 teams) this year. In terms of other players from the 15 a side competition I think they may struggle to get a long enough release from the clubs to make the transition.

Maybe, but I think the lure of the Olympics will be too great for some. SBW's already got it on his radar and isnt it open to League players as well? Oz would be able to put out some awesome 7's sides if the NRL resources were included.

Just think anythings possible and at Rio the 7's will be huge, the lure bewtween now and then a very interesting follow...

I can see that working in NZ and Australia. Maybe also in SA and Scotland. The prob;em for everyone else is that the players are contracted to clubs. The world cup finishes in October and the 7's world cup is in August the following year. If players are going to change they will have to commit themselves from the end of the world cup. That means an effective club release from the English or French 20015/2016 season. Players will have to write it in now. I can't see countries compensating clubs or clubs releasing players.

here's the video from today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYDbARvBffk

astonishing how competitive this is getting now with the likes of england winning one week and the next not good enough to progress. if sevens is the future of rugby based on talent and coaching alone then things look bright for a more interesting future if the irb can sort out some kind of funding regime to prevent the player "economic migration" that is unfairly keeping up some of the wealthy unions. scotland most recently benefit from this with maitland another "kilted kiwi" not to mention good fortune closer to home with the many players england have benefited from and of course the home of "player migration" new zealand who have "ruled the roost" for a long time by being the product of essentially anyone who can play rugby in the entire pacific region.

1118 All Blacks
78 born overseas (http://stats.allblacks.com/asp/bornoverseas.ASP?stats_ID=8)
17 can be said to have arrived as adults.
3 players never lived in NZ, but were non capped local players who covered injuries in provincial games in the 50's or 60's.
8 arrived in my lifetime (i.e. since the late 60's)
2 were Western Samoan (Schuster & Ieremia), 1 was Fijian (Vidiri), 1 was Tongan (Taumoepeau). that leaves 2 English players (Salmon and Gallager), an Aussie (Devine) and a South African (Rawlinson).

Just thought I'd post it....

i didnt realise it was as many as 1118! but that certainly makes my point. thanks for the knowledge canelion!

GloriousEmpire wrote:i didnt realise it was as many as 1118! but that certainly makes my point. thanks for the knowledge canelion!

You've lost me................. I assume you are still in delirious celebration from the game against Ireland.

Well boks big winners. 5 tournaments and 5 different victors (I think). Here's the link to the video:

http://www.irbsevens.com/video/index.html?videoid=2065287

results for today:

New Zealand 21 - 40 South Africa Final Cup
Fiji 31 - 36 Samoa Third Place
Canada 22 - 5 Scotland Final Plate
Argentina 12 - 17 France Final Bowl
Uruguay 0 - 41 Australia Final Shield
Samoa 7 - 12 South Africa SF Cup
Fiji 14 - 19 New Zealand SF Cup
Scotland 35 - 14 Wales SF Plate
United States 19 - 24 Canada SF Plate
England 7 - 40 France SF Bowl
Spain 12 - 21 Argentina SF Bowl
Australia 38 - 7 Kenya SF Shield
Portugal 5 - 7 Uruguay SF Shield

Overall standings with I think 3 rounds to go:

Rank Team Pts
1 New Zealand 96
2 South Africa 73
3 Samoa 71
4 Fiji 66
5 France 59
6 Kenya 57
7 Argentina 53
8 Wales 44
9 England 42
10 Canada 39
11 Australia 35
12 Scotland 33
13 United States 28
14 Portugal 23
Spain 23
16 Tonga 3
17 Uruguay 2
Zimbabwe 2
19 Russia 1

I watched the finals, samoa vs Fiji was a great game spmething like 11 tries in 14 and a bit minutes.

SA vs NZ was a bit more measured but still plenty of try scoring, you can see NZ are missing their regulars. SA got off to a romping start scoring 28 unanswered points in the first half.

Credit to boks. Sevens is one of those games where all side suffer injuries during the season. I see the pitch was pretty narrow, I wonder if that had influence on England and Kenya (i.e speed isn't as much of an asset).

To be honest, I was surprised we did so well, thus far we have been pretty poor without Cecil Africa.

The tournament to date [Series] 5 legs have been won by 5 seperate teams which shows the improvement in the 7`s circuit.
Outstanding Leg for the Boks,BUT NZ have increased there lead by 2 points 23 clear at the halfway stage.
It could be a case of them just doing enough a SF or F appearance in the last legs.To take yet another title this year which is hardly the object of the exercise.

I doubt that will be their aim alan, I am sure they will try to win as many titles as they can.

No team is going to willfully sit back and allow other teams to just beat them.

True Biltong NO NZ team at ANY Level does that BUT such is the structure of the 7`s circuit it is a real possibility.