Let’s cast our minds back to last year’s NZI Sevens from Wellington, as always the third leg of the IRB Sevens World Series.

It’s the Cup final. Hosts New Zealand are up against England. It’s the last game of an incredible weekend’s Sevens.

After a lung bursting first 10 minutes the home team leads Ben Ryan's England, 17-5.

The atmosphere inside the stadium is so loud that the players can hardly think let alone speak to one another, even if they could catch their breath. It’s been upsets galore for the last two days and somehow the home side has battled into the final, with their captain and warrior DJ Forbes heroically playing through the pain of a foot injury.

There are not many places in sport, especially on the IRB Sevens World Series, that are as loud as the Cake-Tin in Wellington.

Eighth Man?

Americans sports fans often talk about the noise in the Superdome in New Orleans and the Metro Dome in Minnesota and the advantage of the crowd acting as an 'extra man'.

Wellington very much offers the 8th man advantage to the Kiwis. This is obvious when you look at the success of the home team on their own soil.

Winners in Wellington five times over the last decade. Facing all of this obvious pressure, England was facing a side that they had only beaten seven times out of 30 attempts before on the IRB World Series and predictably never in Wellington.

Ben Ryan stood in the middle of the field with his team surrounding him unmoved by the odds that were stacked against him and turned to his players and uttered the words:

"Look, I'm excited. We're in New Zealand it's halftime here and we're behind. But I know you've got at least three tries in you. Now I want to see what you've got. You've got the fitness levels; the energy is there, we know that, so now let's play them off the park!"

In that quote Ryan embodied everything I love about the game of Sevens compared to its gorilla of a big brother.

Releasing the shackles

Last weekend we once again saw English sides play with fear in Europe’s Heineken Cup. Fear of moving the ball, fear of losing, fear of... enjoyment?

An unnamed international told me last week that this is the feeling that often runs through him when he heads of to training with the England 15-a-side squad.

Not so in the Sevens. Ryan stood in the middle of one of the most intimidating atmospheres that can face a coach (how often do English coaches and their teams win in New Zealand?) and basically said to his boys, go out there and have some fun with it, play some rugby and give it your best shot.

There will be coaches all over the world this coming weekend saying the same thing, but how many of these will be saying it if they are in the professional 15 a-side game? Not many.

Even at the highest level, Sevens is about the good things in the game; about players and coaches expressing themselves, about people enjoying the game of rugby for everything that it stands for, without the pressure of winning and losing completely dominating the way the game is played.

If you get the chance to pass on a little information in your life to others then when it comes to Rugby this is what I want my kids to know; that the game is about expression, contact, collisions, speed, fitness. But overall having some fun.

That’s exactly how it was and still is on Sunday morning for the Broadstreet Under 11s and Northern Virginia Under 9 tag players and in Sevens, even at the highest level, it is the same way for Messrs Ryan, Gollings, Lawrence, Cracknell, and Gomez-Cora.

The beauty of course of the story of Wellington 2009 is that Ryan's men went out in that second half and did exactly that. For 10 minutes they moved the ball with power and precision and as the hooter sounded the Rugby gods smiled on England.

Damudamu eventually found a hole in the New Zealand defense that they had so desperately been looking for, to go in under the posts and take the win 19-17. And with it, for the first time in this man's memory, England had silenced the raucous Cake-Tin, if only for a minute!

Who says the good guys don't finish first - Amen to that!

More of the same in 2010?

So with the 2010 NZI Sevens kicking off next weekend, will lightning strike twice? You have to think not.

Gordon Tietjens’ men will be flying after two consecutive wins in the Series and will be looking to get the Coronation Street music playing this year when England are defeated! But let’s not just gift-wrap the title to New Zealand just yet. With so many of sides now so well groomed and prepared and with Sevens never a foregone conclusion, the Blacks will have to graft as hard as ever, even with their eighth man.

Westpac Stadium will be rocking once again on the 5-6 February as the whole of New Zealand dusts off the fancy dress once again. Follow all the action thanks to UR7s!