Wellington Club Sevens underway tomorrow with Leg One of Eleanor Roosevelt Cup Women’s Tournament

We have blast off for the Wellington club rugby sevens season

A scheduled four-week Wellington club rugby sevens series starts tomorrow with the first of two scheduled women’s tournaments.

The plan  for the WRFU is to run two weeks of women’s and then two weeks of men’s club sevens over the next five weekends – all tournaments being played on Rugby League Park.

The women’s dates are set down for 31 October (tomorrow) and 7 November next weekend.

This is followed by a break on 14 November for the Hurricanes Schools 7s tournament in Feilding and then two Saturdays of men’s tournaments on 21 and 28 November.

The idea is that for both the men’s and women’s tournaments, they will be run on a points system and the 2026 champions will be found across their performances over the two weekends.

Last year the men’s tournament was run as one tournament played over two days, so a slightly different format again.

There are semi-finals and finals scheduled tomorrow for the first women’s tournament so that tells us that these will be two separate tournaments.

The series is called the American Ambassador’s Sevens, with the men playing for the American Ambassador’s Cup and the women tomorrow playing for the Eleonor Roosevelt Cup.

As of Friday, there are six clubs entered for leg one tomorrow.

They have been split into two pools of three teams each with one crossover game, so each team will play three round-robin games in the first part of the day.

Five knockout games in the afternoon include the Cup two semi-finals, followed by 5 v 6 and 3 v 4 playoffs and then the final.

The tournament is set down for a 10.00am start and a 3.00pm (approximate) finish, so five hours and 14 games and 196 minutes of running action in total.

Northern United are the defending champions, but they are not there tomorrow to defend their crown, possibly leaving  the door ajar for 2023 and 2024 winners and current 15s champions the Petone Ponies to assume favouritism and take some more silverware back to their overflowing trophy cabinet.

Other absent clubs tomorrow, from current or recent 15s clubs, include Paremata-Plimmerton, Marist St Pat’s, Wainuiomata and Stokes Valley.

It could be assumed that some clubs tomorrow will have guest players from these clubs and perhaps some youngsters fresh off Monday’s secondary schools tournament at Naenae College.

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Teams, pools and draw

Pool A:

• Petone
• Avalon
• Oriental-Rongotai

Pool B:

• Old Boys University
• Wellington
• Pōneke

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Women’s series winners since 2015

• 2025: Northern United
• 2024: Petone
• 2023: Petone
• 2022: Marist St Pat’s
• 2021: Not played For
• 2020: Oriental-Rongotai
• 2019: Old Boys University
• 2018: Northern United
• 2017: Marist St Pat’s
• 2016: St Mary’s College
• 2015: Oriental-Rongotai