All to play for in the 2022 Super Sevens Series
NOW in its tenth year the 2022 Super Sevens Series reached the halfway mark at Hazelwood, the home of London Irish, last weekend.
This year’s series has a strong international flavour, with teams from China, Hong Kong, Spain and Nigeria, following Ireland and Jamaica’s lead in using the Series as part of their development programs in preparation for the European, Asia and World Rugby tournaments.
Each leg consists of 15 core men’s teams and nine women’s core sides with one guest team at each leg.
The 2022 series kicked off at Newbury RFC on May 14 with 16 teams in the men’s series and 10 teams in the women’s series which includes the Hong Kong National squad and Bath Rugby.
The men’s pool matches proved to be highly competitive, however it was Hong Kong, China and
Espana 7s who progressed to the quarter-finals along with series regulars, British Army, Samurai, Apache and Wooden Spoon, whilst in the women’s pools it was Hong Kong, Samurai, British Army and newcomers Hammerheads 7s who made it through to the semi-finals.
After four closely fought semi-finals it was Samurai and Hong Kong who went through to the men’s and women’s finals, where Samurai proved to be a little too strong for Hong Kong winning 17-7 in the women’s final. The men’s final went into extra-time having finished 14-14, before Samurai went on to win it 19-14 with a golden try.
Navy Sharks won the men’s plate and Stunts 7s took the bowl, whilst Bath beat Wooden Spoon 31-5 to win the women’s plate.
Saturday May 28 saw the series move on to
Hazelwood for the second leg where once again the men’s pool matches proved to be highly competitive with Scimitar Storm joining the Newbury quarter-finalists as China lost two very close matches to drop into the plate.
In the women’s semi-finals, the finalists from the week before both went out to Savvy Panthers and Hammerheads, with Hammerheads taking the final 31-19 in a hard-fought match, whilst in the men’s semi-finals Hong Kong went on to beat the British Army 19-7 and Apache beat last week’s winners Samurai 31-14 before going down to a rampant Hong Kong 63-14 in the final.
Scimitar Storm won the women’s plate beating Wooden Spoon 17-12 whilst China beat Navy
Sharks 32-14 in the men’s plate and Lions just got past Karuta 7s to take the bowl final 28-26.
So after two rounds complete, Hong Kong lead the men’s series and Samurai and Hammerheads are tied at the top of the women’s series so all to play for as we move onto Stafford on the June 11 before the finals at Aldershot Military Stadium on National Armed Forces day June 25.
The Super Sevens Series is run by rugby people for rugby people, and we would like to thank our sponsors Wowhydrate, Nirvana Spa, Tessen Sports Services and Samurai Sports.
If you would like to know more about the Super Sevens Series, contact barrie@ renascencegroup.com