Sevens fun heads to SwakopThis year’s Safland Rugby Sevens tournament will be hosted in the coastal town of Swakopmund in November. Safland tournament to be held at the coast Swakopmund will host the premier Rugby Sevens Tournament on 12 and 13 November.The organisers say the tournament, which is known as the Safland Sevens, will be the second annual tournament in Namibia and will see international teams such as South Africa’s famed Blitzbokke battling it out with the Namibia Sevens Rugby team.
Other invited teams include Uganda, Poland, Germany, Italy, the United States, Argentina, Germany, Kenya and Zimbabwe. Most of them have yet to confirm their participation.
Last year’s tournament was held in Windhoek. A South African All-Stars Team and Living Legends Team are also expected to showcase their skills.
Willem Strauss, the promoter of the tournament, says there will be three sections in the tournament.
“We will have the international section and the club section, which will see between six and eight local teams taking part with two teams coming from South Africa.
“In the schools’ section, we will have various age groups namely under-13, under-15 and under-17 teams battling it out for top honours. Twenty teams have already confirmed for the school section,” he said.
Sevens rugby made its Olympic debut at the recently ended Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, with Fiji winning the gold medal, while Great Britain took the silver and South Africa the bronze.
With the HBSC World Rugby Sevens Series due to kick off in Dubai in early December, most international teams will be using the Safland Rugby Sevens as preparation to fine-tune their teams.
Strauss says there will be a rugby skills development clinic targeting children aged three to 12.
“All the coaches of the participating teams will impart their knowledge to the young ones. It will be free for everyone.”
Being an Olympic sport, sevens rugby is likely to gain more popularity, and Strauss added that Namibia can emulate Fiji, which has a population of 1.5 million people, by one day winning a gold medal in the sport.
Sevens rugby is a variant of rugby in which teams are made up of seven players playing seven-minute halves, instead of the usual 15 players playing 40-minute halves. -Nampa