Club sevens season underway this weekend [updated]

The Wellington club rugby sevens series and the Hurricanes schools tournament are both on tomorrow, in Wellington and in Feilding.

Wellington club sevens

The first leg of two Wellington club rugby sevens tournaments is being played tomorrow at the twin venues of Rugby League Park and Te Whaea Artificial.

The men’s tournament is on Rugby League Park and the women’s is being played concurrently up on Te Whaea.

The draw and a link for live scoring updates is at: https://xplorer.rugby/american-ambassador-7s/fixtures-results?team=All&comp=All&season=All&tab=Fixtures

This is for the American Ambassador’s series, with the men playing for the trophy of the same name and the women for the Eleanor Rossevelt Cup.

Tomorrow’s twin events are an all-day round-robin format with no finals (as we understand it) and games contested on a points system, this being 4 for a win, 2 for a draw and four-try and losing bonus points.

Points are then carried over to next week’s second and final leg (as we understand it) at Trentham Memorial Park, leading to knockout matches and Cup finals for glory at the end of the day next Saturday.

Barring changes to the draw, the men’s field for tomorrow features 12 teams, representing nine Wellington clubs (10 teams) plus the Waikanae club and a Manawatu combined clubs’ side.

Defending champions Paremata-Plimmerton club are fielding two teams and joined by Poneke, Ories, OBU, the Wellington Axemen, Avalon, Norths, MSP and the Upper Hutt Rams.

Of Wellington’s 14 Premier clubs, absences are Johnsonville (who are down to enter leg two), Tawa, Petone, Wainuiomata and Hutt Old Boys Marist.

Tomorrow’s tournament starts at 9.00am and runs through to 4.40pm, with 24 straight matches.

Traditionally in modern times, the men’s winner of the American Ambassador’s tournament receives an invite to compete at the National Club Sevens tournament, but details of this tournament early next year are unknown at this point. Additionally, the second annual revived Central Region 7s tournament is being held in Palmerston North on 23 November. Wellington failed to enter teams in that last year but it is understood that they will be (albeit unofficially) this time.

With no Colts grade and with most schools not going to the Hurricanes tournament tomorrow (see below) there could be some extra youth spread across the park, as well as the promise of some school leavers in action for their senior clubs for the first time. Additionally, there is sure to be one or two ‘guest’ players from those clubs not entering teams.

Updated Friday 5.00pm: Subject to changes, the women’s field at Te Whaea is now a five-team event.

The five clubs entered are: Petone, Stokes Valley, Norths, Paremata-Plimmerton and MSP.

Ories and Poneke are set to join the tournament next week, while Stokes Valley will drop out.

These entries are up from five at last year’s one-off AA tournament event and three in 2022.

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Recap: Last year’s American Ambassador’s tournament final report:

Paremata-Plimmerton and Petone win men’s and women’s Wellington club 7s titles

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Hurricanes Secondary School Sevens

The 2024 Hurricanes Youth Council’s Secondary Schools tournament is being held at Feilding High School.

This is a five-team boys event, with no girls tournament owing to a general lack of interest, although we have been told that both St Mary’s College and Wellington East Girls’ College would have gone to this.

The five boys teams are: Feilding High School, Whanganui Collegiate, Lindisfarne College, Rathkeale College and St Pat’s Silverstream.

Reasons for numbers being well down for this tournament, which had been showing signs of picking up post-covid, appear to be two-fold.

Despite this tournament being on the HYRC’s calendar for several months, the ‘Super 8’ schools have come over the top and proceeded to run their own tournament on the same day in Gisborne. So, the boys’ high schools of Gisborne, Napier, Hastings and Palmerston North have prioritised that.

The other reason is because of the ongoing general malaise of Wellington schools to take part in these tournaments just up the line. Just St Pat’s Silverstream is going from Wellington when a handful more that played on Monday could also be backing up there.

This tournament starts at 9.40am with the first of five round-robin matches, before the 3 v 4 match at 3.10pm and final at 3.30pm.

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