World rugby fans – welcome to the Aussie arm of the new global web colossus that is Ultimate Rugby Sevens!

As Nigel Starmer-Smith said in his post, how wonderful it is to have a dedicated sevens site to keep track on what is without doubt the most exciting piece of the rugby puzzle.

Australia has historically been a sevens champion, winning Hong Kong several times back in the 80’s. In those days the great players all played Sevens for Australia – Mark Ella, David Campese, Simon Poidevin (incidentally, all Randwick players!) and in later years, players like Matt Burke got their first taste of top line touring with the sevens team.

These days, there are still some young guns to be seen coming through the Aussie Sevens lineup, but with Australian rugby lacking depth and having to cater for four Super 14 sides plus Academy squads it is a pretty tough gig finding quality players who are able to spend the time learning, and more importantly mastering, sevens rugby.

Last year’s Australian IRB Sevens team under head coach Bill Millard was a mix of semi-professional sevens specialists and promising players borrowed from Super 14 sides. As you’d expect, the team had mixed results and, no sooner had many of the players grasped the concept, then they were pulled back into the Super 14 vortex – new Wallaby James O’Connor was a case in point, starring in Hong Kong and then being pulled back into the Western Force squad post Adelaide.

For this reason, sevens appears to be set to struggle in Australia for the next few years, at least until the Australian Rugby Union is financially able to make sevens a fully professional proposition a’la South Africa and New Zealand.

New coach Michael O’Connor, an 80’s Test Wallaby, sevens player and Rugby League star, is not going to die wondering. He has picked a bold new squad which includes several touch football stars, a league player or two and some young schoolboy stars from the last year or so. Retained from the previous year are a few old heads (at least in sevens terms!) to steady the ship - Damon Murphy, who was Aussie vice captain in 08, and Willie Bishop, who has possibly the biggest, most radical step in sevens rugby. So Australia still fights for genuine Cup status, and the World Cup will tell whether the Aussies are in contention or not.

Outside the top tier, Sevens rugby is limited to a few big tournaments on the home stage. Darwin is the jewel in the non-IRB crown, attracting teams from around the world. Byron Bay Sevens on the north coast of NSW is a favourite early season jaunt for Sydney and Brisbane club sides. And the grand old tournament Kiama Sevens, once the selection trials for the Australian team for Hong Kong, still goes ahead every March beside the beach at Kiama, south of Sydney.

Other than these major tournaments and a few minor town tournaments, Tens is the new Sevens in Australia. Perhaps it’s the heat in the pre-season that makes Sevens such a tough proposition for the average player, or perhaps it is the demise of our national Sevens outfit that has led players away from the game. Either way, Tens tournaments are all over the place.

The pick of the metropolitan tournaments hits Bondi in Sydney, home of the famous Bondi Beach, in February 2009. Run by the Colleagues RUFC, Bondi Tens has become the meeting place of choice for rugby players old and young to ring in the New Year.

I hope that UR7s will play some part in renewing interest in the sevens game here in Aussie, and over coming weeks, I’ll be bringing you sevens content from the underside of the globe, where the sun always shines and the rugby is always fast.

As we all know, there is nothing that quite compares with that pinch of thrilling fear in your gut when you run out onto those wide open spaces with only six other guys for company….or the painful joy of running through a gap and sprinting the last 50 metres on vapours cause you’re out of gas.

Sevens is the ultimate rugby test. And it has now found a new home at Ultimate Rugby Sevens.

So remember, in Australia, it’s Ultimate Rugby Sevens – for everything Sevens down under.

Cheers!
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