Home side in charge after day one at Wellington Sevens
Posted by Hamish McBrearty on February 1st, 2008
The biggest party of the summer kicked off at the Westpac Stadium in Wellington as the IRB Sevens World Series came to New Zealand. Fans were treated to a day of fun, frivolity, singing and dancing under the scorching summer sun…oh, and some great rugby was played too.
Sixteen teams came to Wellington for the third stop of the IRB Sevens World Series, fifteen of them looking to break New Zealand’s winning streak. The home side shone as expected, but there were also some upsets, some disappointments and an excellent display of sevens rugby.
This tournament’s Group of Death was Pool B, containing powerhouses Fiji and England, the improving Welsh and minnow the Cook Islands. This pool also produced the tournament’s biggest upset of day one when the Cook Islands beat England 21-17, who later lost to Wales and Fiji to find themselves out of the Cup section of tomorrow’s knock-out games.
Hosts New Zealand powered through their first two games against minnows Canada and Papua New Guinea without conceding a point. In the final game of the night New Zealand took on the other unbeaten team in Pool A, last year’s champions Samoa.
Although both teams had qualified for tomorrow’s Cup playoffs, both were hungry for a win as the loser would face Fiji in the quarter finals. In the day’s most absorbing game New Zealand came away with a 19-7 win, securing top spot in Pool A but Samoa showed their island neighbours that they will be no push-over in the quarterfinals.
Stealing the title of the tournament’s biggest disappointment from the English was Argentina, who lost the tournament opener to the USA by 17-7, and followed it up with losses to Tonga and Scotland to finish bottom of Pool D. Argentina, who sit fourth on the World Series standings, will join USA in the Bowl section of the knock-out games tomorrow where they can finish no higher than nineth.
Pool C went largely as expected with South Africa and Australia advancing to the Cup, Kenya and France will contest the Bowl. Crowd favourites Kenya failed to fire in their pool games, comfortably dispatching France but never really challenging South Africa or Australia.
The crowd enjoyed the party atmosphere at Westpac Stadium, singing, dancing and enjoying the rugby while dressed as super heroes, sailors, movie characters, police officers and Indian cricketers. Behaviour in the crowd was very good with police making just one arrest and nine ejections.
Perhaps the only sour note of the day was the bizarre inconsistency of the referees. Most had excellent games but as the day wore on the referees became more officious, giving out yellow cards after the final hooter, awarding a penalty try 30 metres from the goal line and failing to deal with some late, early or high tackles.
Stand out players on day one included local hero big Victor Vito, Scottish play-maker Greig Laidlaw and Fijian superstar Neumi Nanuku. On form it is difficult to see anything other than a New Zealand vs Fiji final, although in sevens anything can happen.
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The Home side in charge after day one at Wellington Sevens by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
