The action at the second annual Nelson Mandela Bay Sevens rugby festival in Port Elizabeth goes into overdrive today (Saturday) when the men’s teams take to the field.
The second game of the day will see the Emerging Sevens SARU team take on the USA Tigers on the main field. Thereafter the highly rated British Samurai International side will play the Eastern Cape Indlovus.
The action at the second annual Nelson Mandela Bay Sevens rugby festival in Port Elizabeth goes into overdrive today (Saturday) when the men’s teams take to the field.
The second game of the day will see the Emerging Sevens SARU team take on the USA Tigers on the main field. Thereafter the highly rated British Samurai International side will play the Eastern Cape Indlovus.
Other teams expected to deliver fireworks are the star-studded British Army outfit featuring a number of Fijian sevens internationals, the SA Rugby Legends, Kempton Barbarians, SEP Lions, the Emerging Sevens High Performance team and the current provincial sevens champions, the Assupol Blue Bulls.
Today will also see the quarter and semi-finals and the championship final of the women’s tournament. Two Emerging Springbok sides and Eastern Province, who are the current provincial sevens champions, are among the top teams in this category.
Yesterday the Nelson Mandela Bay Sevens got underway with the women’s teams and age groups completing their pool games. The Welsh URDD u/19 side, the current Dubai Sevens champions, showed their class when they beat Port Elizabeth based Pearson High School by 38 points to 7 in one of the highlights of the opening day.
In their other games, the Welsh beat Lynx 1 from Gauteng by 22 points to 12 and Brandwag by 15 points to 7.
Another one of the high profile teams, the Maseno School from Kenya, thrashed Cillië by 49 points to 0 and Lynx 2 by 31 points to 5. They were however outplayed by a spirited Grey High School side who best them on home turf by 31 points to 14.
Framesby, Brandwag and Daniel Pienaar also recorded good wins in the under 19 section.
In the women’s section, both Emerging Springbok sides scored convincing victories. The Emerging Boks A scored 43 points without reply against the fancied Eastern Province side and the B-side beat the Lions by 22 points to 0.
The match-up between the emerging Boks sides went according to the formbook with the A-side getting home comfortably by 22 points to 12 against their second-stringers. EP recorded a heart-stopping two-point victory (19-17) against the Transkei team.
“The quality of the event and the venue was summed up by the Welsh who said it was on a par or even better than what they had experienced at the highly acclaimed Dubai Sevens event,” organiser Laurence Finn said yesterday.
“The consensus is that the 2007 event surpasses last year’s by a great margin and we’re obviously thrilled. If today is our yard-stick, we’re in for a treat tomorrow (today) with several top international sides in action.”
The action resumes at the Grey School campus at 8am today. The tournament ends on Sunday.
Tickets are available from Computicket.