England’s double blow as Springboks eye title
ENGLAND made a disastrous start to the grand finale of the men’s HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series 2022 in Los Angeles yesterday, losing 19-5 to Scotland and then 19-14 to Kenya in their first two matches.
Jordan Edmunds (twice) and Callum Young scored for Scotland before Kenya won their game convincingly, despite the scoreline.
Of the 16 teams involved at the LA Memorial Coliseum, only four could become Series champions; South Africa, Australia, Argentina and Fiji.
With a unique scoring system in place due to the impacts of the global pandemic, each team’s end of season total is calculated by taking their best seven results from the nine Series events. That means South Africa, who won the first four tournaments of the 2022 Series, started yesterday’s event on 124 points and will claim the Series title should they reach the final in LA this afternoon.
Australia were two points behind and Argentina a further four adrift. Fiji were fourth on 104 points but they remain in with a shot at claiming a fifth men’s Series crown despite missing the tournaments in Malaga and Seville at the start of the year.
South Africa arrived in LA in confident mood, fresh from their victory at the recent Commonwealth Games, but were beaten 217 by the USA in their first match before coming back to beat Canada 22-17 in their second match.
South Africa’s closest title challengers Australia and Argentina are paired together in Pool A alongside Spain and Japan and Australia made their intentions clear in their opening match against Japan, running out 61-0 winners.
Play begins today at 8.45 LA time with the semifinals starting at 2.09pm and the final scheduled for 5.28pm.