Reboot plus Rugby Sevens

So, after a month and a half of blogging, which is about a month and a half more than I ever thought I would do, I think it's time to reboot the blog. When I started the blog, it was encouraged to keep our blogs fairly specialized, but I think being more general is the direction I want to take it. I'm still probably going to write about sports a lot, but I think for me, just writing about sports is too narrow of a perspective. I'll probably throw in some posts about travel, politics, music, and other random things that interest me.

Before I do the reboot, I'm going to go back to the well and discuss another Olympic related issue. I'm a little bit behind the times on this one, but I'm still really stoked about it. This being the inclusion of Rugby Sevens, along with golf, in the Summer Olympics.

For those who don't know, Rugby Sevens is a variation of the traditional, 15 man, rugby union game. Instead of 15 men per team, each team consists of seven fast, skilled players. Big bruisers that are necessary for the traditional game are not needed. Games consist of two ten minute halves and are non-stop scoring affairs. End-to-end runs resulting in trys are the norm.

The major competition for Sevens is known as the IRB Sevens World Series. It consists of tournaments in New Zealand, Hong Kong, South Africa, Dubai, Scotland, England, the USA, and Australia. New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Samoa, Fiji, and England are the powerhouse teams. I was lucky enough to attend the 2008 Sevens tournament in Wellington, New Zealand.

I was traveling through New Zealand at the time with some Kiwi friends and we noticed some advertisements for the tournament. I didn't know much about rugby at the time, so my friends decided that this tournament would be a good introduction to the game. Rugby is basically a religion in New Zealand, so I figured this would be quite an event. So, after my friend blew off a job interview in Auckland, much to his wife's dismay, we hopped in a car and made the four hour trek down to Wellington.

All I have to say about my first impression of the tournament was that something like this would never happen in North America. Spectators were encouraged to dress up for the event, so the stadium was full of groups in matching costumes. There were groups of fans dressed up as doctors, Rambo-type soldiers, and even a group of Canadians dressed as hockey players. Between matches, there were drinking competitions on the sidelines hosted by the event emcee. Basically, it was two days of 30,000 people in costumes getting hammered out in the sun and watching some rugby.



The games were extremely entertaining. My national pride was dented early on, as Canada was walloped 48-0 by the host All Blacks. The Cook Islands pulled a massive upset on the first day by defeating England in a nail-biter. Kenya became a fan favorite by playing extremely fast-paced and exciting rugby.

The tournament culminated on the next day, after over thirty exciting matches. The All Blacks sent the crowd into a frenzy by scoring an end-to-end try on the last play, to defeat Samoa in the final. They then proceeded to do their world-famous hakka (Maori war dance), while the booze-fueled crowd went insane.

I hope that the excitement and free-spirited nature of Rugby Sevens tournaments translates over to the Olympics. It's quite the spectacle.