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All Blacks Sevens react to drawing 'pool of death' in Dubai

Roderick Solo delivers the pass for the All Blacks Sevens. Photo by MICHAEL BRADLEY/AFP via Getty Images

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.

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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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6 Comments
K
KELLY 397 days ago

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.
 
 
 

P
Pecos 397 days ago

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.

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G
GrahamVF 24 minutes ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

"has SA actually EVER helped to develop another union to maturity like NZ has with Japan," yes - Argentina. You obviously don't know the history of Argentinian rugby. SA were touring there on long development tours in the 1950's

We continued the Junior Bok tours to the Argentine through to the early 70's

My coach at Grey High was Giepie Wentzel who toured Argentine as a fly half. He told me about how every Argentinian rugby club has pictures of Van Heerden and Danie Craven on prominent display. Yes we have developed a nation far more than NZ has done for Japan. And BTW Sa players were playing and coaching in Japan long before the Kiwis arrived. Fourie du Preez and many others were playing there 15 years ago.


"Isaac Van Heerden's reputation as an innovative coach had spread to Argentina, and he was invited to Buenos Aires to help the Pumas prepare for their first visit to South Africa in 1965.[1][2] Despite Argentina faring badly in this tour,[2] it was the start of a long and happy relationship between Van Heerden and the Pumas. Izak van Heerden took leave from his teaching post in Durban, relocated to Argentina, learnt fluent Spanish, and would revolutionise Argentine play in the late 1960s, laying the way open for great players such as Hugo Porta.[1][2] Van Heerden virtually invented the "tight loose" form of play, an area in which the Argentines would come to excel, and which would become a hallmark of their playing style. The Pumas repaid the initial debt, by beating the Junior Springboks at Ellis Park, and emerged as one of the better modern rugby nations, thanks largely to the talents of this Durban schoolmaster.[1]"


After the promise made by Junior Springbok manager JF Louw at the end of a 12-game tour to Argentina in 1959 – ‘I will do everything to ensure we invite you to tour our country’ – there were concerns about the strength of Argentinian rugby. South African Rugby Board president Danie Craven sent coach Izak van Heerden to help the Pumas prepare and they repaid the favour by beating the Junior Springboks at Ellis Park.

149 Go to comments
J
JW 6 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

149 Go to comments
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