AFRICA SHOULD START OWN RUGBY 7s circuit

Brief Background of HSBC World Rugby 7s Circuit

1. The HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series is an annual event run by the global rugby governing body WORLD RUGBY comprising a series of international rugby 7s tournaments comprising 16 teams.

2. The season's circuit consists of 10 tournaments featuring 16 teams and begins around late November or early December running until May with venues spanning across 10 countries. The countries that host the tournaments are the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, France and England hosting one event each. The participating 16 teams compete for the World Rugby Series title by accumulating points based on their finishing position in each tournament.

Significance of Hong Kong 7s to African Countries (qualification to core status)

3. The annual Hong Kong Sevens is considered the biggest tournament on the Word Rugby Sevens Series competition spanning a period of three days. The significance of the Hong Kong tournament to African rugby was that it was the platform used by African countries with the exception of Kenya and South Africa (have been core teams for a number of years) to join the HSBC circuit as a core team. This however has not materialised into anything significant as none of the countries with the exception of two countries mentioned above have ever earned core status at least in the recent past.

4. In the last Hong Kong (2019) tournament, 16 teams competed in the main tournament, while a further twelve competed in a qualifier tournament with the winner getting core team status for the 2019/20 World Rugby Sevens Series. The winner of the Hong Kong qualifier tournament Ireland replaced Japan who were dropped after finishing as the lowest placed core team at the end of the 2018/19 season.

Introduction of World Rugby 7s Challenger Series.

5. We note with gratitude that WORLD RUGBY has introduced the World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series which will be an annual series of international rugby 7s tournaments that includes men's and women's events sponsored by banking group HSBC. The 2020 inaugural men's tour for the Challenger Series featured events in Chile and Uruguay which was won by Germany featured Uganda and Zimbabwe as the two African teams (ended up in 6th and 7th position respectively).

6. The World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series is a second tier competition below the HSBC World Rugby 7s series and will be used as a platform for promotion to the first tier Series as a core team.

World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series not enough for AFRICA 7s growth

7. It is apparent that the gap between the tier 1 and lower tier rugby skill set logistical and administrative gap is still too wide which makes it difficult for lower ranked tier countries qualify to core status so this new competition which is a brilliant initiative still does not do much to mitigate the gap.

8. It would be great if Africa created its own annual Africa 7s series circuit to enable the various lower ranked national teams have great international competitions on the continent. This would help us improve the quality of play over time and in future increase our chances of fielding more teams in the two available World 7s Series.

9. Every tournament needs sponsers to finance the administrative and logistical costs and for the series to be successful, the players have to be semi or full professional players. This of course means being paid to play as players would have to forfeit their day to day jobs to enable camping, travelling and playing in the competitions. With the exception of South Africa and Madagascar rugby crowds are not very impressive meaning financing from gate takings might not be that lucrative. The crowd at the 2019 Africa Cup 7s in South Africa was dismal and could easily be dwarfed by Craven Week School boy crowds on a weekday.

10. We need to give value to our local tournaments on the continent and have to re-brand the 7s tournaments so that we grow the crowds and therefore attract TV rights interest. If the tournament is marketed well, it is possible by with the help of Rugby Afrique and World Rugby to grow the Series over time. The continent needs to have quality tournaments because we can no longer keep fighting for the 1 position from the promotion/relegation which will probably keeping going to three countries year in year out.

11. An African series is not an impossibility to achieve as most African countries have hosted great 7s tournaments as individual countries eg SAFLAND 7s,KENYA SAFARI 7s,VIC FALLS 7s,Zambia International 7s etc. In Zambia, ZRU in conjunction with RGSM have in the last Two years successfully hosted two World class international tournaments proving that it is not an insurmountable task with the right organising team in place.Africa needs to have a representative Management committee to reconcile these tournaments with sponsors who will have naming rights common to already existing tournaments on the continent.Getting the 7s rugby on TV gives the game the necessary exposure to attract both sponsers and fans which in turn helps grow the African rugby brand. It is our hope that this could one day come to fruition as the sports experts get the idea and develop it further.

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