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Dallen Stanford, former International Sevens star from the USA, gives UR7s weekly updates from the States. Dallen will be reporting on tournaments, teams, players and the state of the game in America. This week he is taking a look at the chances of the USA at the upcoming World Games in Taipei.

I was fortunate enough to speak to USA 7s head coach Al Caravelli a few hours ago about the World Games, and how his team is progressing.

“Today we scrimmaged against Fiji in the morning, and I was very happy with our performance” Caravelli said.

As is the case on every tour the team has to acclimatize very quickly to the conditions, with the USA only arriving in Taipei a day ago. South Africa in contrast have been at the World Games since the opening ceremony on July 16th – arriving with their fellow countrymen - who are taking part in several other events.

Hydration has been vital – with humidity levels being worse than the Hong Kong 7s – but similar to Bangkok and Singapore. Having played in all three of those tournaments myself for the USA, the latter are terrible with regards to humidity.

The first practice on a tour is always the least enjoyable, and many errors are normally made, owing to the long travel day and jetlag. The same can be said of the first scrimmage, but the good news is that the USA did extremely well. Looking at the scoreboard, Fiji touched down 4 times in the three periods, while the USA scored 3 excellent tries.

Caravelli was impressed with his entire team saying, “The kickoffs went especially well. Blaine (Scully) and Thretton (Palamo) were everywhere!”.

The USA also scrimmaged against Hong Kong earlier this afternoon. And it was a great opportunity to work on aspects from the morning session, with limiting the number of turnovers the key. Today’s outing was very beneficial for Caravelli and the practice games gave the team a lot of confidence heading into this weekend.

Tomorrow Thretton Palamo will lead a captain’s walk through with his side, after which the boys have free time to relax. Some of them will be heading out to see a few events happening at the World Games, which is very exciting.

There are some very random sports indeed, click here to see the schedule of events!

After the Rugby 7s tournament on Friday and Saturday the USA will depart first thing on Sunday, unfortunately missing out on the closing ceremony. But with 4,000 athletes representing 90 countries, this is an event like no other for the rugby world. Next stop – the Olympics!

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