Palmer pleased with NPC and direction of women’s rugby

UPDATE Friday: The third leg of the American Ambassador’s Sevens series scheduled for Mary Crowther Park on Saturday has been postponed owing to the weather forecast. More updates forthcoming.

The weather forecast wer_Hutt/

The sevens season is at full throttle over the next fortnight, with the third and final leg of the American Ambassador’s tournament and a one-off representative tournament over the next two weekends.

Mary Crowther Park in Wainuiomata plays host to the deciding American Ambassador’s tournament all day this coming Saturday, and the American Ambassador’s Trophy and Roosevelt Trophy silverware will be presented to the series winners at the conclusion of the day.

Those two teams are likely to be Northern United, both Norths men’s and women’s sides winning the first two tournaments and both will need to bomb this weekend not to win the titles.

In the men’s section, the series is Norths even if they finish as low as eighth, while the women’s team will need to make the final to guarantee themselves the title regardless of what their nearest rivals do.

The draw and confirmed entries (likely 15 men’s and eight women’s) will be confirmed over on WRFU channels on Friday.

The two points tables are:

Men

40 Norths Blue (20 points round one, 20 points round two)

32 Johnsonville (15 and 17)

30 Upper Hutt Rams White (15 and 15)

26 Tawa (13 and 13)

25 Marist St Pat’s (17 and 8)

23 Poneke (10 and 13)

21 Old Boys University (8 and 13)

20 Wellington (12 and 8)

20 Paremata-Plimmerton (7 and 13)

18 Hutt Old Boys Marist (10 and 8)

13 Upper Hutt Rams (5 and 8)

11 Northern United White (3 and 8)

9 Wainuiomata (1 and 8)

9 Wainuiomata (1 and 8)

8 Oriental-Rongotai (0 and 8)

8 Avalon (0 and 8)

With the Cup final being the only final played out last Saturday at Onepoto Park owing to inclement weather, the points allocated to other teams were as follows:

Cup losing semi-finalists allocated 15 points each: UH Rams White and Petone

Plate contestants (losing Cup quarterfinalists) allocated 13 points each: Tawa, Poneke, OBU, Pare-Plimmerton.

The bottom 8 were allocated 8 points each: MSP, Wellington, HOBM, Upper Hutt Rams Black, Norths White, Wainuiomata, Ories and Avalon.

Women

40 Northern United (20 points round one and 20 round two)

34 Marist St Pat’s (17 and 17)

28 Paremata-Plimmerton (15 and 13)

12 Petone (0 and 12)

8 Avalon (0 and 8)

7 Hutt Old Boys Marist (0 and 7)

3 Oriental-Rongotai (0 and 3)

Representative Sevens next weekend

The representative sevens season kicks off next weekend at Rongotai College with a six-team men’s tournament at Rongotai College.

This tournament will be a straight round-robin format, commencing at 10am and the last game kicking off at 2.25pm.

The six teams entered are Wellington Black, Wellington Gold, Hawke’s Bay, Manawatu, Wanganui and Canterbury.

UPDATE: This tournament could be an eight-team tournament with confirmation forthcoming, so even better!

This is followed by the Piri Weepu Sevens tournament hosted by the Wainuiomata Rugby Football Club at Wise Park on Saturday 24 November and then the Central 7s representative tournament in Levin a week later.