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Germany's national Sevens team head to Twickenham for only the second time in its history at the weekend, finding themselves in Pool A of the London Sevens alongside table-toppers South Africa, Australia and World Cup winners Wales.

"We're playing in London against the best in the world and only stand to win in every game", said national Sevens coach Rainer Kumm.

The Germans arrived in London on Wednesday and have planned a tough schedule of training matches throughout the rest of the week. The only previous time they competed on the World Series was in the corresponding European climax to the 2005/06 season, three years ago in London and Paris.

In Paris they were easily outclassed by Argentina and New Zealand but came close to beating Portugal and Italy before winning against Russia. In London at Twickenham they lost against Australia, England and Kenya in their pool, and then against Portugal and Canada in tighter games on day two.

"I have a lot of positive memories from the London Sevens, even though we couldn't quite play as well as we did in Paris the week before", said Kumm.

The Germans have certainly got in some decent tournament preparation for their return to Twickenham at some big European events outside of the IRB World Series. Over Easter weekend they took part in the inaugural Stanislas Sevens with a plethora other European nations, impressing all by coming Runners Up in the Plate with some quality teams on show.

Last weekend in Amsterdam the Germans qualified in 2nd place from Day 1 but were defeated early the following day by the talented Russian side, Yuug. They signed off their weekend in style, though, seeing off a talented Wooden Spoon outfit, which was especially pleasing for Kuum.

'We are pleased with the weekend, we got the right amount of games. Any more would of set us back for the excitement of this weekend'

'We have had 8 guys for London in the Amsterdam squad, and the tricky task has been to remind them of 7s again, some of them have not played 7s for 8 months but the addition of the younger guys who played in Stanislas has worked out great', added Kuum.

FIRA kicks off with Hanover the finale yet again

At both Stanislas and Amsterdam the Germans played under the ‘Scorpian Hannover Sevens’ banner promoting the FIRA championships, which kicked off last weekend in Sopot Poland. The six preliminary rounds of the FIRA European Sevens are played over five weekends in six cities throughout the continent. Countries play in at least two events and those with the most qualifying points go on to play in the final, at German rugby HQ in Hanover in mid-July.

Having previously been staged in Moscow, the grand finale to FIRA's European circuit was held in Germany for the first time in 2008 and proved a huge success.

"I don't know of any other tournament which had such a massive success in its first outing," said Kumm, who dreams of taking Germany all the way to European gold, and turning thousands of German youngsters to the game.

"To achieve that we would need my dream preparation - training sessions with 14 guys every day of the year, and at leat 10 tournaments a year!"

Defending FIRA Champions Portugal will also hit Twickenham with some confidence this weekend, after running out winners of the first leg of this year’s competition in Sopot. The Portugese stormed to the title in Germany last summer beating World Cup winners Wales in the final. Once again they are looking strong this year beating hosts Poland 57-14 in their final warm up for Twickenham. They had earlier breezed through their preliminary rounds In Pool A in Poland, Tomaz Morais' side overcoming Hungary 82-0, Luxemburg 56-0, Sweden 26-5 and Latvia 52-0 to proceed unbeaten.

In the Cup semi finals they also got the better of the Georgians, running out 22-7 winners, whilst it was Poland who found some of their best form to beat an impressive Sweden side 12-7. The Georgians got over their Semi-Final agony later in the day edging out the Swedes later to take the 3rd/4th Play-off.

German squad for the Emirates Airline London Sevens: Franck Moutsinga (Berliner RC), Mark Sztyndera (RK Heusenstamm), Christopher Liebig (Heidelberger RK), Christopher Weselek, Mustafa Güngör (both RG Heidelberg), Alexander Pipa (TSV Handschuhsheim), Mike Härtel, Timur Tekkal (both TSV Victoria Linden), Raphael Pyrasch, Benjamin Simm (both SG Hannover 78/08 Ricklingen), Clemens von Grumbkow (RC Orléans/France), Tim Kasten (Southend RFC/England).