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England look to go three from three in Barcelona

Friday 8 July 2011

Though the eyes of the UK 7s fans are on Twickenham this weekend with the Middlesex 7s taking place, the top 7s rugby taking place this weekend is in Barcelona in the historic olympic stadium.

For many, the addition of the Sevens to the olympics in 2009 it meant that 7s had arrived, so it seems appropriate that this weekend the 3rd leg of the FIRA Grand Prix Sevens is taking place where the olympics was hosted in 1992, which saw some historic performances including Freddy Mercury opening the games and athletes such as Linford Christie, Sally Gunnell winning gold medals in individual events and Micheal Johnson winning his first gold medal in the 4x400m relay.

This weekend the stadium will see the best 7s players in Europe do battle in the GPS. England presently lead the table having won the previous 2 tournaments in Lyon and Moscow. On the surface, it looks that England have dominated the series in their first outing at European level but the standard of the sides is much closer than that.

England have lost games on the first day in both tournaments, losing to Italy in Lyon and Spain in Russia. They have gone on to show their quality in knock-out rugby though winning through on the all important second day. As England have looked to the future they have been bringing through future stars such as Christian Lewis-Pratt who has been playing the Ben Gollings kicking role fantastically as the free-scoring Nick Royle as given him many chances to convert. With experienced World Series players such as Chris Cracknell, Chris Brightwell, Dan Norton and James Rodwell, England have found a way to bring other young players such as Marcus Watson and Sam Edgerley well.

They will not have it all their own way this weekend though, with Spain, Portugal and Russia showing their class over the first 2 weekends of rugby, they will once again be the major rivals for the tournament crown.

Wales have also been competing with a young side but have faced more problems than their English counterparts as they have not yet made the semi-finals. They were in with a chance in Russia before losing out to Georgia in the final group match put pay to their chances of making the knockouts.

Georgia, after an impressive 4th place in Moscow, will attempt to go into the Cup once again. 

The 4 other teams will try to play well and to challenge the favourites for the final victory. The Dutch team will have to recover from the efforts in Moscow to build on their great performance of Lyon (8th).

Romania is getting better and better and will use this tournament to be at its best possible level for the next tournament on 16th and 17th July in Bucarest. The Ukraine will want to do better than the two 10th places in the first two rounds.

Moldova will seek to improve on the ranking 12th or 11th as this will see them relagated to Group A

After last weekend, we know the identity of the team that will join the 7s Grand Prix Series in 2012. Germany succeeded in the Heidelberg tournament, which saw them victorious in Division A after 2 tournaments. Scotland is the second new member for 2012, which will see the all of the World Series 7s European teams taking part in the GSP

 

Tagged in this article: FIRA 7s, England 7s

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