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All Blacks Sevens react to drawing 'pool of death' in Dubai
By
Ned Lester
SVNS season is fast approaching and training is ramping up for the All Blacks Sevens squad, with eyes on a revamped inaugural title.
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The men in black, who will be defending their 2023 series win, have been dealt an almighty challenge in the opening round, coming up against two of their strongest rivals in Dubai over the first weekend of December.
With the teams reduced to 12 for the new format tournament, only the best of the best will participate and each pool for the Dubai leg has a claim for the “pool of death” title.
New Zealand’s opponents will be 2023 Capetown champions, Samoa, and most recent Dubai victors, South Africa, along with Canada.
Incoming head coach and sevens legend Tomasi Cama says the reduction in teams to make for three pools of four rather than four pools of four will mean fans get nail-biting action and heavyweight hitouts right from the start of day one.
“I guess because of the format now with 12 teams and the way the draw has been set up with these few top teams in the same pool, I think it’s going to be good for the tournament,” he told SENZ.
“You’re going to see, consistently, good games, big teams playing each other in pool stages rather than waiting for day two. Which means there’s not going to be any easy games, we have to be on our toes from the get-go. So, we’re certainly looking forward to that.”
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The New Zealand men will head into the competition with not just the 2023 series win but also the Oceania Sevens title under their belt, having won the competition in Brisbane earlier this month.
Given the high-intensity nature of sevens, Cama was pleased to see his team in damaging form just weeks out from the SVNS season opener.
“We were very happy, I mean we went over a week earlier to do our camp over there. We didn’t do a lot of rugby stuff, we just kind of let the boys play and see where they’re at around the game.
“But, overall we can see where they’re at physically and obviously around the game. Obviously playing Fiji, Samoa and Australia, we were happy the way we played against those three. Obviously, they’re all top six in the world as well so, pretty happy with where we’re at around our prep, even the way we played last week to manage to come away with a win, can give us a bit of confidence going into Dubai.”
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IRB 7s CURCUIT;
Hopefully the IRB WR 7s rugby circuit RE imagine their format even more and change the way they format their games very soon, so all the top teams play each other often. Otherwise why watch the 7s IRB rugby circuit when it’s not a real competition.
This new IRB format is a nonsense format, where no teams form counts until the last round like having 40 odd practice games. As none of the six first round games really amount to anything as all the top eight teams make the final anyway. The old IRB ladder system was much better.
Especially when the IRBS 7s format usually means only the top teams can win this bias tournament, which makes the IRB 7s circuit very boring!
Presently the IRB champions aren’t the real champions as a team of champions beats a big pool of teams at every IRB circuit, that aren't necessarily the teams that make final. Making the comp worth watching because presently winning on the IRB circuit depends on who you play. Making the game a shame not a game!
By having all of their IRB 7s series top 12 teams put in TWO pools of six teams, ranked in each pool from the previous IRB sevens ladder standings. POOL ONE 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11: POOL TWO 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12:
Would create a real competition as then all the IRB circuit teams would regularly play each other. Then have the top two teams from each pool after their round robin of 30 games play in the semis for the bronze Final and the big FINAL. Which still takes seven games to the win the Final, but is very competitive spectator wise. Which is 63/4 competitive games spread over three days.
Or 128 games in the men’s and women’s divisions held over 3 days, which should be accomplishable. With 14 manned squads for nutrition and two or three rugby fields at each location?
And by having the bottom four teams after the IRB circuit having to challenge the top two teams from the challenging series. Would create a pool of 6 teams playing in a round robin or three to make the top four as core teams. To RE merge with the IRBs top 8 IRB teams for the next years IRB circuit. Giving the new challenging teams ‘time’ to develop their game!
They also need to evolve the rules of the game to speed the game up a heap to save time to score more tries, the games have become predictable and boring!
Making the 7s IRB circuit very good to watch that would eventually pay for itself, ‘you’d think!
MENS POOLS:
POOL ONE;-----------------POOL TWO;
1st NEW ZEALAND------------------2nd ARGENTINA
3rd FRANCE---------------------------4th FIJI 5th AUSTRALIA-----------------------6th SAMOA
7th SOUTH AFRICA------------------8th IRELAND 9th USA---------------------------------10th GREAT BRITIAN
11th SPAIN----------------------------12th CANADA
WOMEN’S POOLS
POOL ONE;-----------------POOL TWO;
1st NEW ZEALAND------------------2nd AUSTRALIA 3rd USA--------------------------------4th FRANCE
5th IRELAND-------------------------6th FIJI
7th GREAT BRTIAN-----------------8th JAPAN
9th CANADA-------------------------10th SPAIN 11th BRAZIL-------------------------12TH CHINA
By Adopting these five 7s rugby ELVS would mean all the squads on the 7s rugby IRB circuit could win a tournament or two. And would stop the IRB circuit’s predictable boring outcomes?
Who wants to watch a one-sided comp where many squads can’t win it because of its rules? What are ELVs for. These rules would speed the game up and improve its spectacle dramatically. In the order they’re in?
The IRB sevens squads need to have 14 in their squads to have a seven manned bench to help rehydrate the team if these five 7s EVLs were used?
1/ Seven points awarded for a try under the posts, would save a lot of time, to get more tries.
2/ Use the drop goal-line drop-out. Which should already be a law as it’s very hard in sevens rugby to hold a player up over the goal-line, and that type of defence deserves a break. To get to kick the ball away from their goal-line!
3/ All conversions to be taken by the person who scored the try, even if it’s a forward because a scrubbed conversion by a forward would create plenty of time for an extra try or six. Making it far easier to get six quick unconverted tries to win, than to get 4 converted tries to ‘WIN’ a game.
4/ Having one-minute yellow cards for all deliberate knocks-ons and for some cynical game momentum changing fouls, that stops a try from being scored. Would suit any team as having two-minute ‘yellow cards’ is far too long and destroys the games spectacle.
5/ Having two-minute replacement red cards” for dangerous play, and put that player on TMO ‘RE view for a game or for a few game suspensions.
The new format’s a joke imo. You have 7 tourneys to get the top 8 who qualify for the finals tourney, winner take all. So all of this is merely to make the top 8/12. Ridiculous.