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After the excitement of the opening tournament of the 2010/11 HSBC Sevens World Series in Dubai, the teams have gathered in George for this weekend’s SA Sevenss at Outeniqua Park.

Springboks Sevens captain Kyle Brown, England’s James Rodwell, Kenya’s Humphrey Kayange, and Ofisa Treviranus, the skipper of Samoa added their voices to the theme of the tournament by confirming their intentions to raise the bar even further this year.

“The support we receive in George has always been phenomenal and our team enjoys playing here,” said Brown.

“We’ve put what happened in Dubai to rest and have identified some areas in our game plan where we possibly could have done something different. Hopefully things will swing our way this weekend.

“There’s not going to be any easy games this weekend. We’ve got Portugal, Zimbabwe and then Argentina who will be out to stop us at home. But we are the hosts and would want to perform on home soil.”

England kicked off their 2010/2011 HSBC Sevens World Series to the perfect following their victory in the Cup final over New Zealand in the Emirates Airline Dubai Sevens last weekend.

“We looking forward to this weekend’s action and hopefully, the blokes will continue their form from Dubai in George on Friday and Saturday,” said Rodwell.

“We’ve taken a lot of confidence from our victory over New Zealand in the Dubai tournament. We’ve recently enjoyed some favourable results in George, so we aiming to lift the bar this weekend.”

Samoa are the reigning champions in George following their victory over New Zealand in the final of the 2009 Emirates Airline SA Sevens tournament.

“We are the reigning champions in the HSBC Sevens World Series, but we’ll still have to turn up and put in good performances to retain our title,” added Treviranus.

“Obviously, we would have loved to start off the series in Dubai on a good note – that didn’t happen, but there are plenty of tournaments left on the calendar to retain our title. It will be great to start winning a Cup final early on, so we looking at George to claim our first Cup trophy of the season.”